


Tenant of the Heart, a Lake House AU

by bettertoflee



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - The Lake House (2006) Fusion, Character Death, F/M, If you're familiar with the movie you know what you can expect, If you're not you'll just have to risk it for the biscuit, It's a slow burn but its worth it, Lake House AU, Modern AU, Pen Pals, Please note that during certain periods of time, They are constantly working toward each other though I promise, Time Travel, parallel timelines, reylo au, the main characters are in relationships with other people
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-01
Updated: 2019-10-06
Packaged: 2020-10-24 10:04:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 17
Words: 37,955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20704184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bettertoflee/pseuds/bettertoflee
Summary: “Let us never underestimate the power of a well-written letter."-- Jane Austen,PersuasionWhen Rey moves to the city for a new job, leaving the cozy house along the lake for a cold, sterile apartment, she drops a letter in the mailbox for the new tenant.Two years before the house is even a blip on Rey's radar, that same letter is found.As Rey struggles to find her place in a world where a mystery correspondent seems to be the most real aspect of her life, Ben follows in a parallel timeline, just two years behind. Though their paths seem like they'll never cross, at least they've known each other through the letters they share and their time spent at the lake house.Tenant of the Heart is a Reylo adaptation of the 2006 film,The Lake House.





	1. Chapter 1

Rey stands in the doorway of the glass house and watches for the last time as the lake ripples around the stilts which hold it up over the water. The day is beautiful—warm and serene, full, despite what comes with it.

  
Within the house is a tree, its roots stretching down into the water below.

  
The sun glistens off the water, breathing life into the roots from all angles. Its red leaves stretch skyward, butting up against the roof, fighting to break way against the skylight which holds it in place.

  
Reluctantly, Rey tears herself away and shuts the door, heading up the jetty until she’s on land. From the distance, the tree seems even larger, filling every nook and cranny inside the house almost to bursting. She’ll miss the tree the most.

  
Letting out a long, shaking sigh, she pulls her gaze away.

* * *

On the flip side of the coin, Ben drops both feet out of a pickup truck and lets the door slam behind him. Cold air cuts across his face and he pulls the lapels of his jacket higher to cover his neck before cramming his hands into his pockets. The edge of the jetty is at the tip of his toes and he feels a brace not so unlike what he imagines a forcefield to be like, keeping him from stepping any further.

  
To do so would be to commit himself to the lake house on the other end.

  
To do so would be to acknowledge that buying the house was a thing he had, indeed, done.

  
He can almost taste the metal frame on his tongue, the sharp bitterness of it making a home on his lips, not wholly unfamiliar. Inside the house is a tree, and though its limbs are far sturdier than the last time he’d seen it, it’s clear that no amount of age or time could have kept it from succumbing to the patterns of life. The red leaves are an indication that soon, it will be nothing more than a barren structure left to hold the skeletal frame of the glass house.

  
His father had planted it when he built the house, the summer before he was born.

  
The longer Ben stands and stares out across the water, at the house and past it, the harder it is to convince himself that he’s not made a terrible mistake.

  
Letting out a deep, gusty sigh, Ben reaches into the bed of his truck and lifts one of many boxes. As he prepares to walk down the jetty, fully accepting the choices he’s made that have brought him to this point, he catches a glimpse of the old, rusted mailbox at the edge of the gravel road. There is a faint outline of an S still visible. The only portion of his family name which had not been so weathered that it was gone for good.

  
As Ben comes and goes across the jetty, he makes every effort not to let his eyes fall to the mailbox again.

* * *

Behind Rey sits a little red sedan, packed to the brim with her life’s belongings—not much, save a few boxes and a suitcase of clothes, but it’s hers all the same. Packing, moving, her life, fit so tightly into such a small space…it’s nothing she’s unfamiliar with, and yet, something about this house has made her feel more at home than anything she’s ever known before. It’s perhaps the first time Rey has ever felt connected to a place, and here she is, leaving.

  
A series of beeps emits from her wrist and she pulls back her sleeve, casting her gaze on the calendar alert across the face of her watch.

  
“Come on, Eight,” she calls over her shoulder, wiping a hand under her eyes as if to preemptively banish the tears she’s yet to shed. She cocks her head, tilting her chin up a snag, and motions for the dog at the water’s edge to come. “Time to go, girl.”

  
The corgi puts her nose to the ground and sniffs a few times before giving up on whatever scent has captured her attention before making her way up the small embankment toward Rey and the open car door with a grin.

  
“At least one of us is happy about moving to the city.”

  
She crosses in front of the car and joins the dog inside, looking over to where she’s sitting in the passenger seat, head forward, sloppy grin on her face, ready for anything. Rey leans forward and lowers her voice.

  
“Though, you should probably know now—outside time will look very different.”

  
The dog’s face drops for a second, her eyes shifting in confusion. Rey brushes her hand over the dog’s brow as she pulls away to turn her key in the ignition.

  
“Just being honest.”

  
The car wheezes to life, careening forward with a jolt when Rey puts her foot to the gas pedal, struggling to carry itself forward with the weight of the contents within. As they pull away, the dog leans her head through the open window, somber as she watches the trees whiz past. Gravel crunches beneath the tires and Rey tries to maintain a sense of composure.

  
It’s only a place, she reminds herself.

  
As she drives down the gravel road, gaining speed, she allows herself one final glance through the rearview mirror. The second her eyes land on the scene behind her, she shifts her foot to the break and the car comes to a jarring stop.

  
“Shit,” she says, throwing a hand out to keep Eight from flying forward. “Sorry, girl.”

  
She throws the car in reverse and twists around in her seat, backing up until she’s beside the mailbox.

  
“Almost forgot,” she says, diving down to the floor where her open tote bag lays. She digs around until she’s found what she’s looking for, then leans up and places a kiss on the dog’s nose. Throwing open her door and rushing around the car until she’s standing in front of the mailbox, Rey opens the lip and places a small white envelope inside. “Okay,” she breaths. She flips the flag up and backs away, leaning on the car only long enough to pat the dog’s head through the open window.

  
Satisfied, she reclaims her seat behind the wheel and continues to make her way down the gravel drive, away from the lake house, away from the water, the trees, and the little rusted mailbox.  
Though she wants to more than anything in the world, she doesn’t allow herself to look back a second time.

* * *

Rippling water becomes forest which becomes long stretches of empty fields, and soon, Rey is driving into the sky-scraper jungle of Chicago. Before long, she’s pulling down a crowded city street, stopping outside a tall cement building. There’s a sterile nature about it, the exact opposite of the lake house. Even Eight beside her seems to realize this.

  
Rey glances in her rear-view mirror to ensure she’s not stopping traffic, then peeks out the window, taking everything in. In front of the building, hung across scaffolding she very much hopes will not remain much longer, is a banner reading LEASES AVAILABLE in big, bold letters.

  
“It’s…nice,” she says, sitting back and creeping down the road until she finds a spot to park. Eight gives a yelp of disapproval as Rey throws the car in park.

  
As she stands on the sidewalk, she can’t help but let her gaze follow the building up until she has to shield her eyes from the sun. Her heart dips at the thought of calling this home.

  
At her side, Eight lets out a puff of breath and slumps into the sidewalk.

* * *

Cook County Hospital is unlike anything Rey has ever been a part of.

  
The second she walks through the front doors, she knows she’s either made one of the best decisions of her life or one of the biggest mistakes. There’s no way her training in Brookville has truly prepared her for the chaos-walking which seems to emanate from the Dixie-cup colored walls surrounding her now, but she’s made her bed and it’s time to sleep in it—so to speak.  
Sleep is likely the last thing she’ll be getting if the look of the lobby is any indication of what fills the rest of the ward.

  
She glances at the Post-It stuck to her index finger, then up at the main desk where a nurse has her hand outstretched to one patient and a phone wedged between her shoulder and ear. As pointedly as she can manage, without seeming rude, Rey plasters on a bright smile.

  
“Here,” the nurse says, pulling her chin away from the receiver only long enough to blurt out the one word. In her hand is a clipboard. Rey doesn’t immediately take it and instead pulls her lips together, tossing around in her head what she should say. The nurse, blonde buns on either side of her head bobbing, widens her eyes and gives the board a little shake, eyeing the cup of pens at Rey’s left suggestively. “Fill this out and then come back up,” she adds.

  
Rey takes the clipboard, if for no other reason than to get it out of her face, then sets it down on the desk with an apologetic smile.

“Actually, I was told to report here. I’m Doctor Niima—the new resident.”

  
Before the nurse has a chance to put words alongside the unimpressed expression which is written across her face, a shorter woman approaches from behind and clears her throat.

  
“Leia Organa,” she says, thrusting her hand out toward Rey. “Chief Resident.”

  
She purses her lips, thin marks from years of apparent smoking spread out like Ley lines. She sweeps her eyes over Rey from head to toe and lets out a sharp tsk of her tongue a moment later. 

Scooping a stack of files off the end of the desk, she nods her head.

  
“Ignore Kaydel. She’s sweet when she’s not stressed. Come with me.”

  
They walk until she drops the files into Rey’s arms.

  
“Here.” The stack is as tall as her forearm is long. “These are your patients. Familiarize yourself with their charts and make your rounds.” She gives a sharp nod of her head over her left shoulder. “Staff area’s that way. You’ve got a locker with your name on it. Pager’s inside.”

  
With a wink, she walks off down the hall and Rey is left standing, arms full, and wholly overwhelmed.

* * *

Ben lets the front door close behind him, an awful, hollow sound that echoes across the lake a few feet away. A gust of wind whips up off the water’s surface and Ben shrugs his shoulders forward in an attempt to brace himself against the onslaught of chills as he walks up the jetty toward his truck.

  
On the upswing of his gaze, from his feet to the red pickup ahead of him, his eyes catch on the mailbox. Braced against the same wind which is wailing in his ears, the mailbox leans a little to the right, very nearly on the verge of falling over. If the weather remains this harsh, it just might meet the earth before spring.

  
Let it, he thinks as he slams the door of his truck and pulls away down the gravel drive.

  
Forty minutes later, he’s crossed into the nearest town—if town is really an accurate way to describe a place with a population the size of a small graduating class. His truck putters as he pulls up outside a little, rundown building and he heaves a sigh of relief when he cuts the engine, allowing it a moment to cool. There’s a fruit stand out front and a few little easel set up with chalk writing displaying the cost.

  
Five oranges for a dollar.

  
It’s a steal, literally. Ben rolls his eyes.

  
The store is empty, save for the owner behind the counter and a young woman stocking shelves a few aisles past the register. It’s a small, cramped space and Ben feels his shoulders touching the rafters, his head busting through the roof. The man behind the counter catches his eye.

“Hi,” he says with a nod, tapping the eraser of his pencil on the bookkeeping before him. “Let me know if I can help you find anything.”

  
A flicker of electricity seems to make its way through the aged lights overhead and Ben’s left cheek gives a twitch. He has no intention of making more smalltalk than is necessary and he’s relieved to see that storeowner seems to own a similar truth.

  
“Thanks,” Ben says, keeping his head low.

  
He makes his way through the aisles, filling his arms with everything he’ll need to keep his kitchen just shy of empty. By the time he’s returned to the counter, the man has retired to the office at the back of the store and the young woman is at the counter.

  
“You’re new around these parts,” she says thoughtfully as she rings him up. She casts a big smile his way and Ben tries to force one in return, but he knows it doesn’t come off quite right. He must look pained, because her smile falters and she pulls her lips together, keeping a thought to herself. “You moved into that place along the lake, didn’t you?”

  
She reaches below the counter for something and comes up empty handed.

  
“Oh,” she says, bending to get a better view. “Out of bags.” She gives him a little, apologetic smile and turns to look at the wall behind her. “Sorry, let me just—” She reaches up to a shelf well above her head, one hand supporting the bulge of her stomach or holding it to ensure she doesn’t knock anything over.

  
“Here,” Ben says, about to step around the counter and help. At the same time he crosses the invisible boundary between patron and storekeep, the man who had been standing behind the counter when he entered comes out from the back office.

  
“Rose,” he says, clearing his throat and rushing forward. He gently lays a hand at her back, motioning for her to move aside before getting the box himself. Ben reclaims his place on the other side of the counter and dips his head when the woman—Rose—gives him one last, final smile.

  
“I’ll take it from here,” the man says. “There are a few budget lines that aren’t balancing quite right. Take a look?”

  
Rose is quick to pull her eyes away from Ben and fixes them on the other man.

  
“I’m pregnant, Finn. Not incapable of getting a box off a shelf.”

  
Finn gives her a tired nod.

  
“I know, trust me. I know.”

  
Regardless of capabilities, Rose rests her hand on her belly and waddles off to the back room.

  
“He’s too good to me and no good to the books,” she hollers as she passes through the door and out of view.

  
Despite wanting to appear as if he’s completely disinterested in what’s going on around him, Ben does let out a slight laugh.

  
There’s a moment of awkward silence as Finn gets the box down and takes out a roll of bags.

  
“I guess it all balances out in the end, one way or another, huh?” Finn asks as he scoots Ben’s groceries toward the edge of the counter.

  
There’s a moment—only a small one—where Ben contemplates the truth to the man’s statement. Balance wasn’t something he’d ever been good at, but he likes the idea that maybe, for some people, it existes.

  
“I guess it does,” Ben says finally.

* * *

Ben only has one bag left in the truck. A hint of the setting sun ghosts over the horizon and he has to admit, despite himself, that it does do something to the water—makes it shimmer in away that reminds him of the late nights beside the fire with his mother.

  
She’s not someone he spends much time thinking about anymore, but she’s been on his mind the whole drive home. His father too, for that matter. Seeing the couple at the store, then driving back to this place triggered a series of memories he hadn’t anticipated. Moving back here, to this house…he expected them to come to mind, he just hadn’t expected to feel the same sense of conflict and abandonment he had when he was younger.

  
That was the surprise.

  
He takes the bag out of the front seat and slams the door behind him. As he pulls away and starts walking toward the jetty, though, there’s a slight resistance. The bag in his hand rips and apples start to roll in every direction. Defeated, he lifts his hand. The bag is in two, a piece of it still remaining pinned between the door and the body of the truck.  
By the time his hands are full, three apples gripped firmly in each, he’s standing at the foot of the mailbox. The flag is upturned and the door is only half closed, as if someone has recently opened it and not latched it back quite well enough.

  
One of the apples falls back to the ground as Ben looks around, half expecting to see someone else standing beside him. He looks back at the box, expecting to have imagined it, yet somehow knowing he hasn’t.

  
The implication that there was outgoing mail inside catches him off guard, as the lake house has been vacant since…he’d been a child then. It just wasn’t possible.

  
He stows the apples in the pockets of his jacket and flips the flag down, giving the lid a shove until it clamps over the lip, secured.

  
He picks up the wayward apple and rubs it across the lapel of his jacket then stuffs it in with the rest and turns. Before he can take a step forward toward the house, though, something makes him turn to look once more at the mailbox, stubborn curiosity urging him to take a peek inside.

  
Shaking his head as he makes his way back, convinced this has to be a sign he’s spending too much time alone, he props opens the mailbox.

  
Inside is a small, white envelope with a single piece of paper inside. Careful, practiced lettering he doesn’t recognize is scrawled across the face.

> Dear New Tenant,  
Hi, welcome to your new home, and congratulations, etc. It’s a wonderful place, as you already know. I’m sure you’ll love living here as much as I did. I’m the previous tenant, by the way.  
The post office is forwarding my mail but I wondered if you could send anything that might slip through. My new address is below.  
Thanks

Ben flips the paper over.

> P.S. — Sorry about the paw prints by the front door. They were there when I moved in. Same with the box in the attic. I think it belongs to the owner.

Ben pinches his face together.

  
“What the…”

  
He stares at it for a minute, reads it again, then without giving it a further thought, he crumples the letter and shoves it into his pocket beside the dusty apples.

* * *

On the east side of the river, miles and miles away from the lake house, Rey eases down into the plush cushion of her bed, letting her body melt into the folds of the blankets beneath her. The day had gone by in a blur, lost somewhere between gurneys and bedpans, an absolute whirlwind of inner-city hospital life, until finally day turned to night and night turned to day and she was allowed to go home.

  
By the time the clock struck the same hour it had when she’d first set foot in the hospital doors, Rey was hanging her coat, trading her scrubs for street clothes, and stuffing the pager and badge so deep in her purse she’d struggle to find it before the following shift.

  
The sun is peeking up over the horizon behind her, sending a ray of light across the floor and onto the wall across from her. Eight gives a lazy stretch where she lays, just the tips of her paws reaching into the sun, and lets out a little whine. Pushing herself up, she makes her way over to Rey where she can have her back scratched.

  
Rey reaches down absently and runs her hands over the little dog’s ears, toying her fur between her fingers. Eight lets out another little whine.

  
“You hungry?”

  
The dog’s ears perk up and she dances off toward the kitchen, stomping her foot with purpose when Rey doesn’t immediately get up.

  
She has to drag herself to get out of bed, but she does it.

  
She pulls open various cabinets, growing more and more disheartened to find that they’re essentially barren.

  
“I guess it’s been a while since I went to the store,” she says half to herself, half to Eight. “Note to self…” She closes the cabinet and moves to other parts of the kitchen. “Get dog food.”

  
She opens the refrigerator.

  
“Get human food.”

  
The door falls closed with a thick schtuck of the two rubber strips meeting to seal in the cool air. In a last-ditch effort to scrape up something, she opens the little pantry-slash-linen-closet. A jar of peanut butter sits next to a half-empty loaf of bread and a half-eaten bag of chips. There’s a stack of toilet paper next to them and a pile of unfolded towels on the floor.

  
Rey’s eyes fall to Eight who is already looking past her longingly. They let out a sigh in unison, both of them falling back to the peanut butter.

  
“Get a life,” she says—this time to no one but herself.

  
She purses her lips and checks the time. There’s a diner about a block over that would be open soon. She grabs the jar of peanut butter and spoons a healthy heap into a small bowl for Eight.  
With the dog licking the bowl clean behind her, Rey peers out the large window that stretches the length of the far wall, positioned behind her bed, and watches the sun rise distantly over a sliver of Lake Michigan.

* * *

The ground crunches beneath him as he makes his way across the site, bulldozers on one side and lifts on the other, a sea of hardhats and grizzled workers between them. The sun is barely peeking through the cityscape, intermittently making itself known around corners and over the roofs of buildings. It is cool in that way that leaves glass half covered in condensation and the tops of your shoes wet with dew.

  
There are about a dozen half-constructed condos on the lot. Ben walks until he’s standing beside the foreman in the center of all of it. He spins in a slow, thoughtful circle as he assesses what is still left to be completed. He consults the legal pad which he keeps wedged under his arm most of the day and pulls a pencil out from behind his ear, making a note across the top of the page.

  
“I’d like to get the foundation for number seventeen dug today,” he says evenly.

  
Phas blinks at him, a look of abject confusion written in the wrinkle of skin between her eyes.

  
“That’s impossible,” she says.

  
Ben stops writing, his pen still poised above the notepad.

  
“What?”

  
“I can’t get to that until at least next week. I’m already down five men, and I don’t have the extra hands needed for that kind of expedited timeline.”

  
“That’s bullshit, and you know it,” Ben says. Without even looking Phas in the eye, he starts to move away. He makes another note on the paper then sticks the pencil back behind his ear and returns the legal pad to its home beneath his bicep, shoving his hands in his front pockets as he heads back toward the trailer at the end of the lot.

  
Bazine, a tall, gangly brunette who acts as Ben’s secretary, stands outside the door with a cellphone tucked between her ear and her shoulder. Both hands are held firmly beneath her arms in an effort to ward off the chilly morning breeze. Ben can make out snippets of the conversation as he approaches and the second she catches his eye, she reaches out and takes hold of his jacket.

  
“That’s right,” she says into the phone. “Each luxury residence has a private lake view…They’re not available for viewing quite yet, but if you’d like me to add you—” She gives Ben a look that seems to say, You’re going to owe me big-time, then proceeds with the conversation. “Yes, we absolutely expect to be ready on schedule.”

  
She looks to Ben for approval and he gives her a tight-lipped nod. She’s wearing ridiculously tall heels which are sinking into the dirt, causing her to pick up her feet every few seconds to stay afloat. They’re nice, however impractical.

  
“Lovely,” she says, lifting her eyes to Ben and flashing the whites of her teeth from behind a red lip. “We’ll be in touch, Mr. Anderson.”

  
The second the call ends, she throws her arms around Ben’s shoulders, victorious.

  
“I made my famous spinach pie,” she whispers into his ear. “You should come and try some. You’re going to get sick out here in the cold.”

  
“I can’t,” Ben says, brushing her off. “And I don’t get sick.”

  
He moves around her and pushes through the door to the trailer, setting to work at his make-shift desk. Bazine follows and leans against the wall beside him, one leg poised dangerously close to him.

  
“Heard you bought a house,” she says, this time pitching her voice a bit lower. “And apparently I’m the last to know. When am I going to get to see it?”

  
Ben punches at a calculator and makes a few notes to his legal pad. “Mmm,” he mumbles, only half listening. “Yeah, up the shore.”

  
“Up the shore?” She pushes off the wall and leans over his desk, hands positioned on either side of the blueprints he’s furiously scribbling across, face in line with his. “You don’t mean that old metal box on the lake, with the stilts…”

  
He lifts one of her hands and flips the ear of the blueprint over, jotting something on the back.

  
“Why would you buy that house, Ben? It’s mostly rust and what’s not rust is glass. There’s absolutely no privacy.”

  
Ben stops what he’s doing and looks up, putting his pencil down and leaning back in his chair. Bazine straightens a little under his gaze, only enough so that her chest is sticking out a little further than the rest of her body and he has a better shot at looking down her blazer.

  
“Get yourself a pair of boots, Bazine,” he says.

  
She purses her lips and leans back from the table, sticking out her leg and giving her foot a little shake.

  
“What? You don’t like these?”

  
Ben’s eyes laze their way from her thigh to her ankle.

  
“They’re impractical for the site. You’re going to get hurt. I’ll have to pay out worker’s comp.”

“But you’d get to nurse me back to health…”

“Mmm,” Ben says, directing his focus back to the blueprints on the drafting table.

Her foot falls back to the floor with a thud.

“There are a dozen cans of paint in the south lot,” she says, reaching across the table and behind him for her coat and purse in a huff. She makes a point of brushing him as she leans back.

“Supplier sent the wrong color and they won’t let me send it back.”

Ben makes another noncommittal noise. Bazine stares at him for another second, willing him to stop her from leaving. When Ben still doesn’t make any move to regain her attention, she throws her coat on and leaves the trailer, leaving plenty of noise in her wake.

The second the door closes behind her, Ben lets out a puff of air and lets his pencil fall to the table top. He leans back in his chair, removes his glasses and throws a hand over his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose.

The following day, Ben is on his knees along the jetty in a pair of ragged jeans and a plaid button-up, paint brush in hand, a few of the stray paint cans lined up beside him. Bazine hadn’t been wrong in stating that the house was mostly rust—but it wasn’t rusted in a way that a good sanding and fresh coat of paint couldn’t fix. At least somewhat.

There was no way he’d be able to take care of the whole thing with just twelve cans of paint, but if he started small, working his way from the edge of the shore up the jetty and toward the house, he’d get there in time and it wouldn’t look too bad while he was in progress.

Painting always looked like it was going to be a lot easier than it actually was.

He finishes the post he’s been working on and balances the brush across the corner of the paint tray, then leans back on the balls of his feet and stands, looking up at the posts which still remain.

Out of the corner of his eye, he catches a brief glimpse of fur bouncing past him before the entire dog appears, sitting at the end of the jetty by the mailbox, unbothered, like it lives there.

“Who are—” He turns to look up the drive, expecting to have missed a car pulling up or something, but it’s only his truck parked along the gravel. When he turns back to face the dog again, it stands and takes off down the jetty, dipping behind him and passing until he’s at the door of the house. As Ben follows the dog's tail, he notices that a trail of little brown footprints follow, leading up away from the paint can across the deck.

  
“Great,” he says, loudly. “Go on, get!”

  
He shoos the dog with both hands, being careful as he steps over the paint supplies not to add his own footprints beside the ones already drying on the wooden planks.

  
The dog shuffles a little but remains sitting in the entryway of the house. The closer Ben gets, the more he feels himself losing the anger which had so quickly swelled inside him. It’s a little dog, a corgi, and there’s something about its stout nature that makes him take pause.

  
Then, somewhere in the back of his head, little alarms start going off.

  
His brow creases together and he pushes a hand through his hair, stopping to stand back so that his weight is cast mostly on one foot and he’s able to observe the dog from a new angle, as if that will help him see more clearly, or with a new sense of understanding.

  
He shakes his head, abject.

  
He pushes a hand through his long, dark hair and lets it make a home across his mouth, holding either side of his face.

  
“No,” he whispers beneath his palm, defiant to what’s before him. “There’s no fucking way.”

  
The dog tilts its head, one ear flicking in attention. There’s an almost quizzical look in its eyes.

  
“Stay,” Ben says as he moves past the dog and entered the house. He goes directly to the back where his jacket is laying across an armchair and stuffs his hands into the pockets until he finds the piece of paper he’s looking for.

  
He unfurls the page and flattens it across the corner of the wall, reading it for the third time.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Sunday! 
> 
> I have no idea what my posting pattern will be. Obviously it’s all written. Some chapters are longer than others...might post a few times in a week, might wait a bit longer if things at home pick up and I get behind. Just giving you a heads up!
> 
> Hope you’re enjoying so far. I’m absolutely loving hearing from those of you familiar with the movie. It’s one of my favorites too. And to those who haven’t seen it, it’s on Netflix! I would say watch after reading but if you need to know what happens, go for it!

Kaydel has her head bent over her phone, a Twizzler sticking out of her mouth as she narrates what she’s typing. 

“I just don’t think we were meant to…” she stops and turns to face Rey. “Do you think it’s too much if I say we weren’t meant to be together, or should I just say I’m not interested?”

“Mmm,” Rey mutters, only half listening. “I don’t know if I believe in fate, but honesty usually works pretty well. You’re really breaking up with him on Valentine’s Day?”

Kaydel takes a bite out of the Twizzler and goes back to typing. 

“Yes,” she says simply. “I thought about sticking it out until tomorrow so I could at least have a nice dinner, get laid, you know—but I just can’t find it in me to go over to his apartment again and face that god-awful fish smell.” 

Leia was right, that she’s not so bad when she isn’t stressed. Of course, when she is, she’s a nightmare. It’s one of those rare days where they’re both off at the same time, and as neither of them has a date or any other, better plans to occupy their time (well, Kaydel has the  _ option,  _ but seeing as she’s giving that up), they’re taking their time walking through Grant Park. 

“It’s such a beautiful day,” Rey says. “Unusually warm for late February.”

A huge fountain sits in the center of the park. Little droplets spray off in every direction as the pool of water sucks up from the basin and is forced through the piping in strict, precise streams. Each droplet catches the sun in such a way that a prism of light dances across the concrete. 

“Let’s sit for a minute.”

They make their way over and sit along the edge. Rey drags her fingers through the water and mentally transplants herself to the shore of the lake. Even the birds have decided to come back early, flittering through the tree limbs like it’s already mid May and the start of spring, rather than winter’s hangover. 

Eventually, Kaydel tears herself away from her phone and they lean back, arms stretched out behind them, reveling in the small reprieve. 

A bird flies slightly too close, or perhaps it’s a butterfly nearly landing on her foot, or the woman throwing something away from off to her left—but something catches Rey’s attention and makes her open her eyes. She lifts her head languidly, still heavy from the warmth of the day, and her eyes fall on the mill of people at the base of a building across the street. 

There is a dream Rey has from time to time, where she is walking in a field of poppies.

The dream will go on for hours, or so it seems, until the wind billows around her and the stems of each single poppy bow until they kiss the soil beneath her feet. The wind only lasts a moment, but when it stops, she is awake. It is an ellipses—a single staccato—the carry from one day to the next, slightly bent, like a fold in the page of time. 

The second she looks up and catches sight of the crowd, she’s in the poppy field, the wind in her hair and a million red flowers blurring her vision. 

On the sidewalk across from the park is a man and down the road, only a snap away, is a bus. 

Between them, there is a horn, a beat, and nothing else. 

He has his head bent as he looks at something in his hands, and with one single step, everything comes to a screeching halt. 

The only thing Rey can see as she sprints from her seat at the base of the fountain to the street is red. Her ears muffle as impulse and training take over. She is a frenzy of action. 

Some distant part of her feels Kaydel beside her, sees her whip out her phone and call for an ambulance, but something in her chest is screaming. 

“We need an ambulance in Grant Park, near Buckingham Fountain,” Kaydel barks into the phone. 

The second she crouches at his side, his lifeless body spread out on the pavement, she knows. 

_ Death happens every day _ , she reminds herself.  _ It’s inevitable. _

She throws herself down, ear pressed to his chest, hands gliding over him as gently as she can be, feeling out how bad the damage is. 

“A bus hit a pedestrian,” Kaydel is saying on the phone. She kneels beside Rey and starts waving off the crowd. “I don’t know! We were in the park across the street and then he was flying—get an EMS crew here,  _ now _ .”

_ Nothing could have stopped it. _

Seconds turn to minutes, as they do, and in no more than a bat of an eye, the world is down by one. 

Rey’s hands are shaking as she places her open palms, one on top of the other, at his chest and makes quick, steady compressions. She bends her ear to his mouth. No air. A few more compressions. Her lips to his, her fingers deftly pinched over his nose. Ear to mouth. No air. 

Compressions. 

Mouth to mouth. 

Compressions. 

At some point Kaydel pulls her away. It’s not long after that when the EMTs arrive. 

* * *

For the next two weeks, the dream of the poppy field is replaced by the scene at the park. 

It begins to reach the point where sleeping is almost impossible. Every time she closes her eyes, all she can see is a tall, broad body being tossed from the front of a bus to the pavement a few feet away. 

On one night in particular, she’s resting between rounds at the hospital and wakes in a cold sweat. 

“I heard what happened at the park,” Leia says from across the room. Rey looks up to find she’s looking at her over the top of a magazine from a table in the far corner, half cast in shadow, easy to miss. “EMT’s said you fought hard—” 

She breaks off and looks out the window. A moment goes by where she places a hand to her mouth. 

“Yeah, I really knocked myself out.” Rey stands on shaking legs and joins the older woman. 

Something passes over Leia’s features but a moment later she pulls herself out of her thoughts and turns back to look at Rey, lowering her hand and taping her fingers lightly atop the cover of her magazine in thought. 

“Can I give you a piece of advice?”

There is a beat of silence where Rey does not say anything and Leia licks her lips, preparing to speak anyway. She feels around for the words, rolls them around on her tongue, tasting them against the back of her teeth. 

“The things we see here, every day…it’ll never get easier, and it’ll never stop. When you’re not at work, get as far away from here as you can. Take the day and do something that relaxes you. Go on a date, have dinner with your friends—show Kaydel how to meet someone  _ nice _ .” 

They both laugh, just barely, but it feels unnatural. Too much for the moment. Leia lets out a shaky breath. 

“Just…keep your mind off work.”

“How?” Rey says, really breathing for the first time since leaving the fountain. 

Leia turns and looks out the window again, the night sky alight with specks of fluorescent light that dance where stars ought to be visible. 

“You have to pick yourself up; go on to live another day and make it count. Because that’s a privilege they no longer have.” 

* * *

Rey wastes no time in taking Leia’s advice. The next off day she has, she and Eight are in the car driving to the lake. 

“I’ve missed this,” she mutters to Eight as the scenery changes from skyscrapers to trees and the air coming in through the cracked windows grow a little less stale. She reaches over and runs her hand over the dog’s face and she gives a sigh of contentment. As she crosses into the small town, she checks the time and pulls off the road, stopping outside the small market for something to eat. 

The door overhead gives a little tingle as she enters and before she knows what’s happening, she’s being tackled by the ankles, two small arms wrapped behind her knees. A toddler-sized head smashes against her upper thigh. Eight gives a yelp of excitement and the small girl averts her attention from Rey to the dog, holding her against her neck. 

“Paige!” Finn says as he comes around the gondola display, arms full of Kleenex. He lets out a sigh of relief when he spots the little girl, eyes lighting up the second he recognizes the dog and follows up to face its owner. “Rey!” he nearly shouts, leaving the boxes to be forgotten on the counter. 

He comes forward and scoops up the little girl before pulling Rey in for a hug. 

“I didn’t know you were coming in; you should have called!”

“It was a bit last minute,” she says honestly. “I can’t come all the way out here without stopping to say hello to my favorite little peanut though.” She reaches out and brushes her finger against Paige’s cheek. The little girl leans into Finn, hiding as best she can in the crook of his neck to the point where her pigtails are the only thing left to be seen. 

“Well we’re glad you did,” he says earnestly.

For the first time since moving to the city, Rey feels the hand of isolation loosen its grip.

When Rey had packed her day bag and gotten into her car that morning, her only thought had been of Lake Michigan. She had not driven miles outside the city just to end up at a place someone else was likely calling home. 

But then one bend lead into the next and eventually pavement turns to gravel, and before she knows where she is, she was putting the car into park beside the familiar jetty. 

Much to her surprise, the house seems relatively uninhabited. She’s able to see inside without issue and each of the rooms appears to be just as empty as they had been when she’d packed up a few weeks ago. Her heart sinks a little to know that it’s empty. The loneliness she’s been feeling for herself leeching off onto the structure. It strikes a nerve to know that it has the potential to be hers again so soon. If someone else has moved in…well, it would be easier to write off the possibility that she made a mistake moving in the first place. 

In an effort to avoid letting that train of thought sprout roots, she takes a tennis ball from the floor of her car and makes her way toward the shore, following behind Eight’s shadow. 

They toss there at the water’s edge until the sun begins to disappear along the horizon. Though she stands with her back to the house, her eyes focused on anything but, Rey finds her gaze trailing back to the skeletal frame, a self-destructive obsession taking form. When the air coming off the ripples no longer contain the balmy notes of afternoon sun, Rey stuffs 

“Come on, time to go,” she calls over her shoulder, drawing Eight’s attention away from a particularly enticing burble of bubbles. She makes one final paw at the water then the two make their way back toward the car and the cold structure, now devoid of life, save the tree in its middle. 

Unlike it had been when she’d pulled down the gravel drive headed toward Chicago, the urge to return to open the mailbox is not an afterthought.

As she passes it in order to reach her car, Rey’s arm lurches out and her hand pulls the metal lid from its upright position, a habit that can no more be broken than one could urge themselves to forget the act of blinking. The second her hand is full of cold, rusted metal, she’s brought back to her senses and remembers that such an act is no longer her burden or joy. 

But, what’s done is done, and it’s too late to assuage curiosity. 

Inside, where her envelope ought to have been, there is a single piece of graph paper. 

> _ Is this some kind of joke? If it is, I don’t get it. You need to leave my property.  _

Rey’s brow pinches together and her heart starts to beat a little faster. She looks around, expecting to be caught—expecting someone to shine a flashlight in her face, grab her wrist and shake the paper in her hand, ‘ _ You don’t live here, now leave!’ _

But that doesn’t happen. 

She is alone. The shore is quiet. Eight still stands beside her, panting happily. 

She looks back to the letter and continues to read the steady, practiced penmanship. 

> _ I’m not the ‘previous tenant’—there is none.  _ _ I thought this was a mistake, or a joke, but then you knew _
> 
> _ How did you know about the paw prints? _

Rey lets her hand fall to her side as her face contorts into a thousand different depictions of confusion. 

“How did I?” She scoffs and rolls her eyes, then looks to Eight. “How did I know about the paw prints? They’re right there.”

She reaches through the window of her little sedan and pulls a pen out of her bag at the floor of the passenger seat then scrawls hastily along the bottom of the page. 

> _ Hard to ignore paw prints leading the way into your front door for two years. Not sure I have a better answer than that? _

As an afterthought, she adds:

> _ Not _ _ a joke—please forward my mail.  _

  
  


It doesn’t matter how late into the morning Ben sleeps in on the weekends, or how early in the evening he goes to bed during the week—he always wakes up tired and comes home feeling right on the cusp of death. 

Like the zombie he is, he shifts the truck into park, retrieves the stack of mail from the box and kicks his way down the jetty, his eyes already half closed. 

The second he opens the door, he’s struck with two little paws somewhere around his shins. He lets out a startled noise before his surroundings are brought into focus and he remembers that he’s no longer the only inhabitant of the house. 

“Oh, yeah. You.” 

Ben lets his messenger bag drop to the floor by the door and gives the dog a gentle nudge, surprising himself as he bends a knee and lets his hand fall to rest along the dog’s scruff. 

He flips the kitchen light on as he enters and pulls out a beer, thumbing through the stack of mail idly as he pops the cap and takes a drink. 

He’s almost to the back of the stack when a thin piece of paper catches his attention. It isn’t in an envelope, and there beneath some slight smudging he can see his own handwriting. 

He pulls it to the front and tosses the rest of the stack to the counter, drinking from the bottle until there’s nothing left. 


	3. Chapter 3

The hallway smells just the way he remembers it: stale, a little like cleaner mixed with mold, and overwhelmingly of menthol. It’s the latter that really strikes a particular nerve, but there isn’t anything to be done about it. 

Ben stands as far away from the lecture hall as he can while still being in the line of sight for the door. He can hear the commotion starting to build on the other side as students stand from their seats and let the little arm desks slam down between the chairs. A few seconds later, the door comes slamming open as he anticipated and a sea of people spill forth, pushing past one another on a mission without any regard to their whereabouts. 

Ben misses a lot of things, regardless of whether or not he’ll admit it. 

Grad school isn’t one of them. 

His skin is crawling to the point where it literally itches. He pulls at the collar of his shirt and fiddles with the cuffs of his sleeves, rolling and pushing them up until they are just below his elbows. It only helps a little, but it gives him something to focus on. 

The crowd dwindles until there at the back appears a head of greying hair and a neck with a scarf wound up nearly to the chin. Poe talks animatedly to a young woman beside him, using his hands to gesture at something in the air only they could envision. He looks up in time to catch Ben’s eye and lays a gentle hand on the woman’s shoulder, excusing himself. 

“He’s back!” Poe says as he ambles up beside Ben. 

“You wish.” Ben’s eyes linger on the doorway. 

Poe gives a slight nod. “She’s pretty.”

Ben drags her eyes away from the woman and locks on Poe. “She thinks you’re straight.” 

“With this?” Poe gestures to the scarf. 

“True.”

“You’ll be asking for this scarf when it snows in a week,” Poe adds. 

“It’s April. We aren’t getting anymore snow.” 

Poe pulls his bag over his shoulder and stuffs his portfolio under the flap. 

“What are you doing here? I thought you were supposed to be this big, important man, too busy to slum it here with the rest of us.”

Ben casts a glance over his shoulder towards the door which is still standing wide open, waiting for the room’s final inhabitants to exit so it can be locked back again. “I’m never too busy to look up an old friend—buy him a drink.”

“Friend?”

“Sure, sure,” Ben says mildly. 

Poe gives a slight ‘tsk’ of his tongue and places his hand to his chest, stepping back and looking Ben up and down .

“Ben Solo, are you asking me out?”

Ben gives him a hardened look before retraining his eyes over Poe’s shoulder. “No,” he says flatly. 

Poe looks back to where Ben is staring and in the very same second, a shadow forms in the doorway, then is quickly replaced by the frame of a tall but feeble man. He and Ben hold each other’s gaze for a long moment before the man shuts the door, locks it, and retreats in the opposite direction down the hall. Poe, sympathetic to the plight that has existed between the two men since long before he and Ben were friends, gives a curt nod, fully comprehending that the time for joking has past. 

“Right then. Let’s get that drink.”

* * *

Two bars and four drinks later, Poe takes a bite of his burger. 

Ben watches him chew over the top of his readers, his phone in his hand, casually strumming through snapshots of the blueprints for the project he’ll be working on once the condos are completed. 

“So how’s the condo life?” Poe asks through a mouthful. 

“Challenging.” Ben closes his phone and takes off his readers before taking a drink of his beer. “It’s a lot, managing a project so big. But most of the time I—”

“Good money?”

Ben narrows his eyes as he lowers his glass. “Is that really—”

“Come on, ballpark.”

He sits for a moment, running his hand up and down over the condensation of the glass. “I bought a house,” he says finally. 

“Really…”

“On the lake.”

Poe’s eyes grow a few sizes. “That much, huh? Shit. I guess that makes selling out on your dreams and betraying your talent totally worth it. Do you ever think about the firm, going into business together?”

Ben lets out a sharp sigh and raises is hand, catching the waitress’s attention. After Poe has taken a few more bites of his burger and there is a fresh beer in front of him, Ben lets out a muffled _ hell _, followed by a hot breath of air. 

“Sure I do.”

The look on Poe’s face implies he knew this would be the response. 

“What about coming back to school?”

“No,” Ben says, clipping. 

“So it really makes you happy, huh? Building someone else’s dreams…”

“It’s not that easy. Snoke is…he’s really very talented when it comes to making a _ business _ out of architecture. It’s not all about the art, you know? He understands the practical side. He’s a realist. Some people need money, others need places to live.” 

Poe gives a little shrug and nod of his head. He doesn’t agree. 

“I have a dog,” Ben says after a moment. Poe rolls his eyes. 

“Shit,” he says under his breath. “Nice dog?”

“Sure. He just showed up the other day. Can’t get rid of him.”

Silence falls over them as they both try to pretend the conversation didn’t almost go _ there _. The place it always goes. Snoke. 

Ben tosses around something that has been bothering him since the door opened and Poe and the rest of the class spilled out. He lets his eyes drift to Poe’s a few times and downs half the pint of beer before he finds the courage to say what’s on his mind. 

“Does he ever ask about me?”

Poe pushes back his plate and folds his hands behind his head, leaning into the food-coma stupor. He thinks for a moment and then finally his face falls. 

“No,” he says quietly. 

Ben drinks until the glass is empty then grabs the bill and takes out his wallet. 

“Sounds about right.”

“You should have seen him lay into me today. He hates me almost as much as—” Poe stops himself short but the words are already hanging in the air between them. 

_ He hates me almost as much as he hates you. _

“He doesn’t hate you,” Ben offers. “He hates your work. And your work ethic.”

“What’s wrong with my ethic?”

Ben gives Poe a look as he places three twenties in the plastic sleeve with the bill. 

“Yeah, what the hell. My work ethic sucks.”

They bite out a bitter chord of laughter, but there’s a half-heartedness to it. 

“I’ve got something I need to do,” Ben says after a moment. “Want to go for a ride?”

* * *

When they pull up in front of a construction site with a fence about two times as tall as either man and a wide sign advertising the apartment building which will be coming in the next few years, Poe assumes it’s a project Ben will be working on in the coming months. But then he catches Ben glancing down at a piece of paper and following along the street with the other buildings beside the site and it becomes clear he’s not been there before. 

“What exactly are we doing?”

“I need to find this building, but…” He looks up at the sign and then back to the piece of paper. “That can’t be right.”

They pace the block a few more times, Ben muttering the building numbers under his breath as they go. Eventually, he gives the piece of paper to Poe. There’s an address scrawled in an unrecognizably lazy, scattered handwriting. 

“Do you see that building here?”

Poe glances up and down the block, turning a few times to reorient himself now that he has a larger understanding of what they’re looking for. 

With an air of confidence, he strolls a few paces down the block. 

“Here,” he says with a nod. “Should we buzz up, or…?”

Ben gives him a disgruntled look and Poe throws up both his hands, defensive. 

“It’s here. The construction site—that was a joke.” He lets out an exasperated sigh and mumbles something unintelligible under his breath. “Touchy, touchy. Are you taking over a new project?”

“No,” Ben says, confused. “I’m just trying to deliver a piece of mail, but…The address can’t be right.”

He holds out his hand for the letter and Poe gives it one final glance before relinquishing his hold on it, offering a slight bemused look when Ben meets his eye. 

“Who is she?”

Ben looks at the letter more closely than he had the other two times he’s read it. The address is there, but it’s clear now that it’s very obviously for a building that, against all reasonable logic, has not been built yet. 

Above the address is a name. 

_ Rey Niima _. 

He gives the body of the letter a quick once-over, looking for any indication that it’s a prank or a joke or that Rey isn’t all there in terms of her mental capabilities. But he comes up short. Because address aside, she seems…normal. Nice, even. 

By all accounts, the letter and its contents are genuine.

Then his eyes catch the date. 

“It's…” 

Poe looks at him, eyes squinted, obviously growing bored of playing whatever game they’re in the middle of. “Got someone yanking your chain, Benny Boy?”

“No,” Ben says quietly. “Well, maybe…” He gives the letter to Poe one last time and looks at the sign along the scaffolding. It’s to be an apartment building, open for new residents in the next year and a half. “Look at the date.”

There’s a beat. 

Ben shakes his head and passes a hand through his long hair, letting it drag over his eyes next. 

“It’s dated two years from now,” Poe says. “Ben, what is this?”


	4. Chapter 4

Rey sits in the small shared office with her back to the window and a hand lightly shielding her mouth. Her eyes glance quickly toward the clock along the wall. She still has ten or fifteen minutes before she’ll be late for rounds. Her scrubs are wrinkled from hours of wear, and there are clear shadows under her eyes from lack of sleep.

She ought to find a bunk in the staff room and close her eyes for a half hour, but instead she’s resigned herself to this odd form of torture. 

In her hand is a letter, and on her brow, a kind pattern of annoyance. 

> _ Rey, _
> 
> _ There must have been some mistake. I tried to deliver this in person, but…maybe you listed the wrong address? No apartments, just a pit. Also the date? I don’t know what I’m expecting by putting this back in the mailbox, as if it’s going to find you, but…there’s something odd about this situation. I can’t work out how you knew about the dog’s footprints. No one’s lived in this house for years—I should know. _
> 
> _ I can’t tell if I should be taking all of this seriously or not, but I guess you’ve piqued my interest. Want to try and explain? _
> 
> _ Ben _

She reads the letter three times over before exchanging it for the notebook she keeps tucked in her desk drawer. 

> _ Ben, _
> 
> _ Got your last letter. Like you, I’m not quite sure why I’m writing back. I guess I want to sort all of this out. I can assure you there are no tricks up my sleeve. I’m certain I have not written the date incorrectly. Trust me when I say there are a lot of things going on here at the moment, but the date is not something I have the luxury of forgetting. I’m a busy woman. _

There’s a level of indignation in her voice that makes Ben laugh despite himself. Even without knowing her voice, he can hear a glimmer of how it might come across. 

Ben leans against the kitchen counter, one hand absently running along the top of the dog’s head. It’s the handwriting and the voice that catch his attention most this time, not the content she’s scrawling across the page—though that should be grabbing his attention. All things considered. 

There’s an intimacy to it he hadn’t expected. Despite the fact that he’s hardly convinced of her existence, he can’t ignore the little surge of interest that had sparked when he’d pulled up the gravel road after a long day and begrudgingly checked the mail. 

So she’s arguing that the date is correct. 

It’s impossible, but…he eyes the dog in his peripheral and it’s already glancing up to meet his gaze.

So are a few other things. 

“I guess I’ll play along, huh? For now? She’s off by a few years, but what the hell.”

He continues to read. 

> _ By the way, I know where I live. The mail isn’t _ _ actually _ _ getting forwarded—I’ve had to drive up _ _ there _ _ to get it. I know the building’s nothing to look at, especially when you’re comparing it to the lake house, but…it’s not exactly a pit. _
> 
> _ Okay, I tried to be nice before, but I can’t. What year do you think it is?? _
> 
> _ Thanks (I guess?) (For nothing, really…) (I’m insane. Maybe I’ll toss this in the trash rather than wasting the gas to drive back up and stick it in the mailbox.) _

Ben smiles, despite himself. He’s the picture of insanity, continuing to write back to someone who thinks they’re from the future, expecting a different result than what he’s received before. But she’s doing the same, so at least they’re insane together. 

The dog beside him lets out a yawn and sinks down to the floor, flopping over with decidedly little grace. 

“She’s the one who’s lost it,” he mumbles aloud. “Two-thousand nineteen…” He shakes his head as he grabs a pen and flips the piece of paper over, then pulls his phone out to check the exact date. Just for good measure. 

> _STOP BULLSHITTING ME,_ _PLEASE_. _It’s April 23, 2017._

Rey snorts, incredulous.

She’s at the end of her bed, the scrubs she’s been wearing for well over forty-eight hours in a pile at her feet. She’s fresh off a double shift that wasn’t originally on the calendar, and though she should have rushed straight home for a hot bath and her bed the second she was finally released from her duties, she instead found herself seated behind the wheel of her car amidst the city traffic, driving out toward Lake Michigan like the erratic person she’s becoming. 

It paid off, though, the second she stood at the mailbox, wind passing through her greasy hair, absently tapping the side of the mailbox with the tips of her fingers as she willed herself to open the lid. 

When she did, there was a single envelope inside. It was the same she’d left for him; he’d scratched out the mailing address and written her name in bold, calculated measure off to the side. 

The characters looked angry. 

When she pulled the paper out from within, he’d only written one single line in the white space from her own letter. 

Maybe it’s the fact that she’s read it ten, twenty, or possibly one hundred times by this point, but as her eyes carry over the line again, she can’t help but laugh. 

She’s unsure if she should even say anything back—what’s the point? But the second she thinks of _ not _ responding, something in her begins to fizzle out. She bites at the inside of her cheek as she thinks of what to possibly say next. Aside from a few moments stolen with Finn and Rose on her way to and from the lake, this is the first real connection she’s had in years. 

Eight, who is laying on the floor beside her, lets out a little moan, like she can read Rey’s mind and knows the betrayal taking place. 

“Oh, I know I’ll always have you.” 

The dog sighs contentedly. 

Rey stands from the bed and pulls open her closet, taking down a shoebox from the top shelf. 

Inside is a scattering of photographs, most of them Polaroids from her twenty-fifth birthday. As she rifles through them, she comes across one in particular that makes her stomach drop. 

You don’t notice yourself aging. It’s one of those things that happens so slowly, it almost doesn’t seem to happen at all. Then, all at once, you’re a decade closer to whatever’s at the end and staring at a younger version of yourself in a photograph, the ex-boyfriend you thought was your soulmate staring back at you with a cheeky grin. 

In the picture, she has her arms wrapped around the waist of a man she hasn’t seen or thought of in years. She’s wearing a blue dress he bought her specifically for the party. It doesn’t fit quite right, but she’s also mostly skin and bone beneath its folds. The majority of that night is a blur. She remembers snippets—mostly that she hadn’t enjoyed herself. 

Rey flips the picture over and runs her hand across the words on the back. They’re in Hux’s handwriting, choppy and careless. 

_ September 23, 2015 _

_ Happy birthday, baby! _

She cringes inwardly and flips it again so that their smiling faces are staring back at her. 

“Is this the impression I want to give?” she asks the dog beside her. Eight blinks back, slowly. “I mean, on the one hand, I wouldn’t mind this stranger thinking I have a big burly man living with me, who might slit his throat if he tries to make a move…On the other, Hux is no burly man and I’d be more likely to fend for myself than he would, so.” 

She waits for a minute, toying with the picture in her hand. 

“All right. Not this one, then.” She lets it fall to the bottom of the box then flips it over, face-down for good measure.

Finally she lands on a picture from the same year that actually has the date printed on the back. She takes her pen and circles it a few times over then writes — _ see!?— _off to the side before she stuffs it behind the letter she’s writing. 

It’s not fair, that there are two women in the picture she’s included. 

He leans forward and peers out the window of the trailer at the construction site where Phas is yelling at Mitaka.There’s a half second where Ben considers intervening, but his eyes drift down to the picture again, and without a second thought, he reaches across the way and pulls the blind.

He eases back in his chair and holds the picture up so that it’s under the light on his desk; one of the women is a tall blonde, easily as tall as Ben is himself. The other is a small brunette with a wide smile. He flips it again and looks at the time and date stamp on the back beside her heavily underlined _ see!? _

It makes him chuckle, where other letters have only sparked irritation or suspicious curiosity. 

He picks up the letter which had accompanied the picture and reads it over, shaking his head.

> _ So help me god, if I find out this is you, Finn, and you’re just pulling my leg…Rose will make your life a living hell if I ask her to. _
> 
> _ Since you don’t believe me, here’s a little something for you to keep in mind. Spring of 2017, there was a huge snow storm. Power went out across town for a week. Bad flu followed. Bundle up and buy some extra blankets. That house is hard to keep warm. _

Between the picture and the mention of Finn, Ben is half convinced whatever’s going on is real. In the same sense, he’s almost forgotten that she’s trying to prove she’s existing two years ahead of him. 

“A snowstorm,” he says behind a hand. His eyes dark over to the little calendar on his desk where the date is April 5. He scratches the bottom of his chin and makes another careless glance toward the window over the rim of his glasses. 

He jumps when the door is thrown open and Bazine walks through. 

“Oh, it’s cold out there!”

Her hair is covered in a light dusting of…

“Snow,” Ben says quietly. 

“I know. It’s gotten all down the front of my blouse.” Her lips pout as she rubs her hands together furiously. 

Ben pushes himself up from the chair and in one quick stride he’s at the window, pulling up the blind he’d shut only a moment before. 

“It’s really snowing. It’s _ April _,” Ben scoffs. As if on cue, he sneezes and looks down at the letter. There’s one final line at the bottom of the page and a cheeky little smile sitting beside it. 

> _ Bundle up :) _

He tears the calendar page off the little stand on his desk, tells Bazine to keep an eye on the site, and puts on his coat, placing the small stack of papers neatly into his pocket. 

Ben stays up half the night, rolling around in his head all the different implications of this ordeal. The list is only long if you let it be. In reality it’s quite simple. Somehow, they’re communicating back and forth from two completely separate dimensions. Or timelines…universes? 

Maybe _ simple _ isn’t how he’d describe it. 

When he wakes up the next morning, he makes a beeline for the mailbox in nothing but a robe and his work boots, the little _ S _ on its side no longer any concern. He’s all but forgotten this house has ever had any other purpose than to connect him to this odd encounter. 

Rey has stopped using envelopes, stopped writing on normal paper all together. She’s holding a little journal and a pen, and at the back between the last few pages is the stack of paper she’s received from the other end of whatever kind of portal this mailbox has turned out to be. 

When she’d sent the picture, there’d been less than a fifty-fifty chance she was dealing with someone legitimate. In the depths of her heart, she’d felt most certainly that it was all a joke. A cruel one, yes, but a joke nonetheless. 

But then the calendar page was sitting in the mailbox first thing this morning and on it just a few carefully drawn out words. 

> _ Can this be happening?_

A warm breeze laps at her skin, sending a surge of calm blossoming through her bones. _April_ _5, 2017_ is written in black across the top of the page. A little cartoon is in the corner, depicting a scene that’s supposed to correspond with the cheesy joke below it. It’s lost on Rey, something wholly American and just far enough out of her reach. 

She runs her hand across the words. _ Can this be happening? _ She doesn’t feel qualified to answer. It doesn’t take any sense that she could have lived in a place for two years and not experience anything as magical as this until she moved away. It doesn’t make sense that she drives through tank after tank of gas, making the trip from the city and back every chance she gets. It only solidifies the strong connection she feels toward the house. 

At this rate, it would have been more cost effective for her to simply remain living on the lake. But…then all of this would never have started. And she’d be lying if she said it hadn’t given her a renewed sense of interest in life. 

She scribbles across the calendar page, marking out the year and writing _ 2019 _ in its place. After a moment, she adds a winking face. 

She slips the paper back inside the box and flips the little flag up. 

She’s about to turn away when it falls back down. 

Her brow pinches, as if there’s anything that could still surprise her after all this.  
  



	5. Chapter 5

Flicking the flag down is a gut reflex.

A cold gust of wind whips up under Ben’s robe and he sneezes. 

He’s built like a mountain, all arms and legs and torso, a brick wall where his chest ought to be, but it doesn’t stop the frigid mist in the air from making icicles of his body hair. 

At first, when he opens the mailbox his heart takes a dive and he feels the familiar haze of resentment and disappointment wash over him. It’s just his little calendar page sitting in the bottom of the mailbox. He reaches in and pulls it out, not thinking a thing of it, fully expecting to see nothing but his own writing staring back at him. 

But then his eyes catch the struck-through date and a small word at the bottom, below what he’d written. 

> _ YES _

It’s stupid, but…the paper feels a little bit warm. Something inside him is screaming that he only has a matter of seconds to make a decision if what he suspects is true. He rubs the page between his fingers, then crushes it up into a ball and sticks it back in the mailbox, flicking the flag back up. 

“What the hell am I doing?” he mutters to himself quietly as he holds on to either side of the box, his large hands dwarfing it until it seems almost play-size. 

Ben looks over to where the dog is sitting beside him and shakes his head. 

“Don’t look at me like that.” 

The dog responds with a bark. 

“I know it’ll still be there when I open it all right, I’m not crazy. I’m just…testing theory.”

When he does open it again, the paper is still there. For the briefest of moments, his heart settles and Ben allows himself to imagine going back to a time when he didn’t communicate across the folds of time. 

But as soon as it’s there, it’s gone—because, while yes, the paper is there, it’s not alone. And it’s no longer crumpled. 

It’s been smoothed out, each little peak a soft reminder that it hadn’t been so flat just a moment ago. He reaches it and takes it out again. 

> _ No need to lose your temper. _

Rey’s laughing as she looks out with bright eyes across the lake at the aquarium-like house above the water. Eight is trotting beside her, four little legs bouncing in rhythm with Rey’s heartbeat. 

Something comes to mind from one of the letter’s she’d sent him before and she ducks away to her car, making quick strides so as not to let the opportunity of catching him while he’s still at the mailbox die. She throws herself through the passenger door window and dives to the bottom of the floor, digging a scarf out from under the seat. She grabs her notebook and pen as well and jots down on a piece of paper: _ In case you get sick, drink lots of fluids and rest up—doctor’s orders. _

She bends the scarf a few times and sticks the paper in one of the folds then places it gently inside the mailbox. The widest, stupidest grin is plastered across her face. 

As she pulls away, she folds her arms and starts to chew on the nail of her pointer finger. 

“I wish you were actually here,” she says quietly.

The scarf catches in the wind the second Ben opens the mailbox and he has to dive to catch it. Her scent is on the wind and it about knocks him over. It’s floral, but not in the same way a grandmother smells of flowers. There’s a bite to it, something sultry and warm. He pulls it to his face and closes his eyes, comforted by the isolation gained from living where he does.

When he wraps it around his neck, it’s like she’s there. 

He shakes his head and runs into the house for something to write with and a coat. 

They do this until Ben’s hands are like ice and he’s sneezing or coughing or wiping his nose on his sleeve more often than he’s not. It’s like an ice pick through the heart when he finally has to tell her he’s too cold to stay. 

The dog has a bad habit of jumping but when Ben writes to Rey—_I think we have the same dog_—and she responds with, ‘_Does yours jump on you when you walk in the door and scare the shit out of you? Short, orange and white, sleeps like a human on her back?_ _I don’t know why, but I call her Eight_,’ he’s able to keep himself from scolding her.

Ben buys dog treats the next time he’s in town and uses them to teach Eight how to sit.

He takes the time to talk to Finn and Rose; isn’t quite as bothered when they ask about him personally. He’s not suddenly looking for friends, but it’s nice to feel a little as if he has a connection to Rey in knowing them. Even if they’re a few years apart and her name doesn’t ring a bell with them. 

> _ You were right, _ he writes one night. _ I got the flu and all the windows in this house are covered in frost, which means the walls are practically ice. How did you manage? _

> _ Blankets and hot cocoa. And Eight. She likes to get under the blanket with you. _

Ben pats the bed next to him and Eight stretches up until her paws are at the edge. He hoists her over and she burrows below the blanket until she’s curled up beside him, her chin on his torso. 

> _ I don’t even know the right questions to ask, or how to understand this. Do you think we’re breaking the space-time-continuum by communicating like this? What if, wherever I am in your timeline in 2019, what if something’s wrong? _
> 
> _ This isn’t Back to the Future, Ben—though I’ve always wanted to drive the DeLorean. What do you think it smells like in that car? I bet it’s like leather and oil and mildew…_
> 
> _ Why does that read with a hopeful tone? Are you secretly a mechanic with a fixation on old cars?_
> 
> _ Maybe._

Talking with Rey is the easiest thing Ben has ever done. But it’s also the hardest. Every morning when he wakes alone and walks down to the end of the jetty with Eight on his heels to retrieve a letter from the mailbox, he wishes that Rey were beside him, speaking the words he reads.

He wonders what she sounds like. How she talks. 

> _ Maybe it’s time we properly introduce ourselves. I’m a doctor—first year residency, internal medicine. _

> _ Wow. My mother was a doctor. I’m impressed. You must stay busy. _
> 
> _ I’m an architect, a drop-out, and a failure. Depending on who you ask. _
> 
> _ Really I just build houses—well, help run a company that builds houses. _

> _ I can already tell you you’re wrong on at least one count. Not a failure. Tell me something else. What do you like? _

> _ You’ll laugh. Promise to keep an open mind? _
> 
> _ Okay. _
> 
> _ I used to freelance on the side, doing calligraphy, like…wedding invitations, design work. It paid well, when I needed the extra money. I think I’d like to take it up again. _
> 
> _ Okay, I have a question for you. If in two years you’ll be living in Chicago, in the apartment that doesn’t exist yet, and I’m living in the lake house ‘now’, where are you? _

> _ I’m in medical school, just outside Wisconsin. Well—I mean, in my ‘now’ I’m in Cook County hospital, but in your ‘now’… _ Rey looks looks around herself at the hospital cafeteria. _ Okay, this is weird, this is weird. _

> _ What’s it like in 2019? At least tell me that Dorito in office gets impeached. _

> _ Ha! I wish I could. But, on the bright side, at least they finally figured out how to create hover cars with bio-economic fuel and global warming is no longer a concern. _
> 
> _ Kidding, kidding. Maybe that was poor form. If anything, I think 2019 is worse than 2017. Do me a favor and read up on your candidates. It’s likely I’ll be deported before I have the chance to become a legal citizen. Brit here. (You can’t see me, but I’m raising my hand.) _

> _ I wish we could see you _ , he admits a few days later. _ There are so many things I want to show you. _

Despite everything her brain is telling her, Rey gets a flurry of butterflies in her stomach when she sees those words across the page, because it’s inside her too—this itch to actually know him. She lowers the page with a smile on her lips and pushes open the door to her apartment. It’s cold and lonely, but at least there’s Eight. 

> _ Thanks for the favor, _ she writes later that evening with a glass of wine in one hand and a thoughtful gaze on her dog who is sitting politely beside her. _ She was always a little rowdy before. I wonder if she misses you. _

> _ That’s funny…I was wondering the same thing. _
> 
> _ What does she like? _

> _ Belly scratches. Fresh water after walks. _
> 
> _ No country music; it makes her ears bleed. She’s partial to the classics: the Stones, Queen, Guns n’ Roses. _
> 
> _If she’s feeling sick or looks a little down, offer her strawberry ice cream. Chunky Monkey if it happens to be a Monday—those are especially rough and require a more focused concentration of sugar._ _She didn’t get a lot to eat as a kid, so make sure you don’t forget to feed her. It’s okay if it’s nothing fancy. Just make sure she’s full. _
> 
> _ And…how did she end up living in the lake house? _

They’re no longer talking about the dog, but there’s a good chance they never were. 

> _ The same way most of us end up where we are. She was left there. _
> 
> _ It’s okay though. I think it turned out to be her favorite place on earth. _

They both find themselves being more honest than they have been with anyone in years—maybe even anyone, ever. There’s a piece of each of them that writes it off as safety behind anonymity. But that’s the thing—Ben and Rey are anything but unknown to one another. They’re as ingrained in each other’s lives as they ever could be, all amounts of distance aside. 

Just because you can’t see something doesn’t mean it’s not there. 

> _ I’ve only lived in this house for a few months, but it’s been around most of my life, _ he writes. _ It’s funny…I’ve always hated it until now. _  



	6. Chapter 6

> _ Tell me more about yourself _ , Rey writes. _ What’s your favorite thing in the world? _

Ben is sitting in the middle of the park with a map of Chicago. 

> _ This city, _ he writes back. _ On a day when the air is so crisp and the sky is so bright I can touch every detail, every brick and window. Come on, take a walk with me. This Saturday._

>   
_ This is crazy, why are you going to all this trouble for me? _

Rey exits a train onto en empty platform. The doors shut behind her and as she walks towards the stairs, looking out across the city’s skyline. She takes out a map, unfolding it. There are little circles with numbers scattered across the page, and in the water, a legend.

> _ No trouble. Come on, it’s beautiful out. _

He takes her through the entire city, pointing out all his favorite spots. Rey follows the map so closely it’s like he’s really there. Most of the buildings Ben has her stop at are old, all of them with articulate character. By number five, Rey feels like she knows him. At ten, he’s talking in her ear, and when she hits twenty, he’s right beside her. 

“Oh, number twenty-seven.” She’s so taken with the little brownstone, squeezed between two massive apartment buildings that she says the words out loud. 

> _ She’s a beauty. My grandfather used to tell me she was like the grandmother of the city, keeping a watchful eye on everyone and everything. He used to take me on walks like I’m taking you now. He taught me how to appreciate the world around me. _

“I wish we could have done this walk together,” she says absently, looking at her next stop on the map. A few blocks down from the house there is an abandoned building marked. The legend only has a direction, where others have given a narration of significance. Rey reads it carefully and walks to the west side of the building, looking up at it’s brick face. 

When she does, her breath catches. 

On the wall, in the same font she’s been following all day is a message. 

The legend to her heart. 

> _ Rey, I’m here with you. Thanks for the lovely Saturday together. _

* * *

> _ My dearest Mr. Solo, _
> 
> _ Are you willing to play a game with me? _
> 
> _ I’ve been flipping through old journals and date books, thinking of you and what I was doing in your time. A specific memory stands out, and I’m wondering if you could help me fix something. _
> 
> _ Two years ago today, I was taking the 1:45 train to Madison from Riverside Station and I forgot something there. If you find it, could you please put it in the mailbox? It would mean a lot. _
> 
> _ Yours, _
> 
> _ Rey _

* * *

Ben walks through the station. 

There are a few people milling around, everyone in a hurry either coming or going. He feels out of place, too big for the small space, and with no real reason to be there aside from observing, it feels like all eyes are on him. 

He checks his watch for something to do and finds that its nearly quarter past. 

Overhead, a voice rings out through the main station. 

_ Final call for the 1:45 to Madison, making the following stops… _

It draws Ben’s attention away from his wrist and back to the few people who still surround him, eyes peeled for a single woman. He takes from his pocket the picture she’d sent. Again, he’s regretful of the fact that he isn’t sure which is her.

At the very least, he is certain that she’s neither the older couple by the window, or the business man standing near the door. And, though it is possible that she’s a mother of four, he doubts it. 

Hands in his pockets and brow creased, Ben makes his way outside where there is only a single couple on a bench. He stands resolute with his back to the wall, idly looking up and down the length of the train.

The conductor of the train makes the same announcement the staff had made inside a moment ago as he stands at the door of the train, ushering passengers inside. 

“Final call for the 1:45 to Madison, all aboard!”

Beside Ben, the couple stands and that’s when he sees her—the same woman from the photograph. _ Of course _, he thinks, eyes now understanding.

Rey is absolutely everything he would have expected her to be, and somehow more beautiful than he could have imagined. The picture, which has clearly been taken in the recent past or has yet to be captured, hardly does her justice. 

There’s a petite nature to her frame, though she is neither short nor overtly skinny, that makes Ben _ know _ , in a way he’s never known anything, that they’d fit together perfectly. He feels dirty having that kind of thought about her after _ just _ having seen her for the very first time, but after a moment he realizes—it’s not just the image of her, here and now. It’s the fact that he’s known her for so long, that they’ve been dangling at the edge of something for so long, it’s like being parched and left unsatiated. Now, to finally have her here…he wants to drink her in until he’s had his full. 

The only thing that keeps him from rushing forward is the man currently holding her to his chest. 

It guts Ben. 

He stays with his back to the wall, watching them as best he can without giving himself away, until Rey pulls herself away and boards the train. 

The man she’s with—her boyfriend, or so it would seem—leaves the station before the train has even begun to pull away, and it irks Ben that he doesn’t even stay long enough to see her leave. 

When he’s the only one left standing on the platform, Ben pushes off the wall and comes to stand forward, more toward the train. It allows him to see past the pillar which had previously blocked his view of the bench they were seated on. There, alone, sits a book. 

He looks up to the train as he makes his way over, a feeling of panic rising in him, though it is unwarranted. 

It’s spine is still warm from where her leg must have been pressed against it when she was seated. He picks it up then turns quickly on the spot, moving toward the train, but he’s too late. It’s already begun to move, carrying Rey and any hope of speaking with her in the present time further and further away from him. 

In that exact moment, she comes into view in one of the windows, realizing what she’s left behind. 

When her eyes land on him, they hold there for a heartbeat. 

Ben’s hand is still outstretched, reaching for her. Rey can’t help but retreat. 

When he can no longer see the soft angles of her features, his eyes fall to the book in her hand. 

_ Persuasion _

He draws it to his face as he walks away and breathes in. 

It smells the same as the scarf. Soft, a bit like something warm, and wholly her. 

* * *

When Rey visits the mailbox a few days later, it’s empty, save a letter. Her heart sinks. 

“What happened?” she wonders aloud. 

She tears the letter open on her way back to the car where Eight is waiting in the passenger seat. She leans in and gives the corgi a little kiss to the forehead then begins to read. 

> _ Rey, _
> 
> _ I found it. I have it with me, don’t worry. One day I’ll give it back. I promise. I know how important it is to you. _
> 
> _ You might not remember, but we saw each other. At least, I saw you. You never told me how beautiful you were. Long brown hair, gentle, caring eyes. It nearly broke me to see you with someone else. Is that too much for me to say? I’d like to see you, or at least talk. _
> 
> _ Yours, _
> 
> _ Ben _


	7. Chapter 7

A series of pagers go off and Rey looks to her hip quickly, relieved when she finds that hers is not one of them. Her shoulders relax and she drags her eyes back over to the letter on the table and picks up where she left off, putting pen to notebook as she writes. 

_ I’d like to see you, or at least talk _ , he wrote. She runs her fingers over the traces his pencil left, the grey lead smearing into the grooves of her index finger. 

_ Let’s try something then, _ she writes back. She checks her watch.  _ Call me at 5PM today _ . 

No sooner has she written the ‘y’ on ‘today’ than her phone starts to ring. Her stomach drops and the pen falls out of her hand, leaving little ink blots along the page as it rolls off the table. Carefully, she reaches out and picks up the phone, as if touching it may somehow make everything unfold and come to pieces. 

The door to the break room opens and Kaydel walks through, whipping open the fridge with an angry look on her face. It snaps Rey out of her frozen shock long enough to hit the little green button and bring the phone to her ear. 

“Hello?”

Kay drags herself over and sits across from Rey at the table, ripping into a yogurt. There’s a moment, where no one makes any sound at all—not Kay, not Rey, not whoever is on the other end of the phone. Then, all at once, Rey clears her throat, about to speak the word that’s been sitting on the tip of her tongue,  _ Ben? _ and in that very same moment, a man clears his throat and speaks. 

Rey’s face drops. 

“Oh,” she says, quietly. “Hi.”

Kaydel seems to sense a shift in the room. She eats her yogurt more quietly and with less abandon. 

“No, I don’t think that’s a good idea. Look, it’s not easy for me either, but…No, I’m not  _ mad _ you called, I just…” Rey shifts so that her back is to Kaydel and she’s facing the windows that look out over the East Wing where a quiet garden sits between the two buildings. “I’m saying please don’t come down. I need more time— _ we _ need more time, especially if we’re going to stay friends.”

Another mostly quiet moment passes before Rey whispers into the phone a defeated, “Okay,” and hangs up. 

She stays standing at the window until Kaydel clears her throat. 

“That sounded heated,” she says, rinsing her yogurt cup then dropping it in the trash and coming to stand beside Rey at the window. 

“Sorry,” Rey says. 

“It’s okay. You know, sometimes I imagine falling into the tracks at the train station, just so someone would have to jump in and save me, and I’d be in a coma and they’d feel a sense of duty to stay by my side and nurse me back to health and then, ta-da, when I wake up I find he’s magically in love with me. You know,  _ While You Were Sleeping _ style.

“I’m saying that to say…at least you have someone who wants to come and visit. Who would like to be something more than a friend.”

“Connix,” Rey says carefully. “It’s not like that. It never  _ should _ have been. It was very…unhealthy. And honestly, your daydream doesn’t sound very healthy either.” 

“Mehh…” Kay says, brushing it off. “That’s why it’s just a daydream. So, I take it he’s not the person you spend all your time writing letters to?”

Rey whips her head around so face it pinches her shoulder. 

“What? I’m not always writing letters.” The way she says it is too defensive. 

“Sure you are. You’re not as secretive as you think.” 

Kaydel shoots a look over to the table where Rey’s open notebook is sitting, pen still on the floor.

* * *

Later that day, she’s in a dark stockroom with her arms folded on top of a pile of clean sheets, her forehead resting on her wrists when someone comes up behind her and puts a hand at her back. 

“You don’t seem yourself,” Leia says quietly. 

Rey rolls her head around until she can see the older woman. A sliver of light from the half-open door cuts across her face like a diagonal scar and there is sorrow somewhere behind her eyes. 

“I’m just tired,” Rey lies. She casts her eyes to the clock, “I go home in an hour. I’ll be better when I come in tomorrow, after I’ve had some sleep. How are you? Forgive me, but, you don’t look much better.” 

Leia considers her for a moment then sorts through a few shelves in search of something. 

“Snap said you offered to take his shift on Friday,” she says after a moment, ignoring Rey’s remark. Leia narrows a look over the rims of her glasses and Rey withers under her stare. 

“He has plans with Kay. I couldn’t tell him no.” She leans off the sheets and gathers her clipboard, adjusting the stethoscope around her neck. Leia finally spots a box of booties.

“You want something done right, you have to do it yourself,” she says, holding the box up. Then, as an afterthought, she adds, “Don’t overwork yourself, Rey. Trust me. You’ll work most of your life. You’re here too much as it is.”

These words ring loudly in her ears a few hours later, when it’s nearly one in the morning and she’s standing outside her elevator, arms laden with too many grocery bags, key dangling from the tips of her fingers in a way that almost ensures she’ll drop them when she eventually goes to use them. 

Nearly three decades of working and this is what she has to show for it. 

* * *

When Ben checks the mail, it’s empty again. 

He’s a thirty-seven year old man and shouldn’t be this disappointed to find an empty mailbox, except that…he is. For so long, they did so well. Back and forth, an exchange easier than breathing. To be cut off so quickly, and without any forewarning, he doesn’t know what to think. 

> _ Hey, pen pal. You haven’t written in a while.  _

Rey doesn’t make it out to the lake house for another three weeks, but when she does, she finds Ben’s note.

She’s neck deep in her bathtub, a glass of wine in one hand, his letter in the other. Eight is asleep on the floor beside her, each little snore a comforting soundtrack to the otherwise melancholy evening.

> _ Hi Ben, sorry I haven’t written in a while. It’s been…a rough few weeks. I’ve hardly had enough time to sleep. It was good getting to drive up to the lake house today. I miss it there, the quiet, sleepy nature that surrounds it. God. It had been too long since I saw a real tree. The sky looks different when you get that far from the city.  _
> 
> _ It’s not so bad here when I’m busy. It’s when I have a second to stop and breath that it seems really hard. Sometimes I wonder what I’m doing, being here in this big grey city all alone. I miss the way the world looks from the windows of the lake house.  _

Ben tucks her letter under the legal pad, between it and his clipboard, and makes his way across the construction site to deal with Phas who is currently laying into Mitaka. There’s a loneliness to Rey’s words that echo off the page back at him and he doesn’t know exactly what to do with that. 

He was happy before, or he thought he was. 

Now…

“What’s the problem?” Both Phas and Mitaka turn to look at him like he’s Mommy, come to scold and put them in time out. 

Now, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of purpose in all of this. What gets him out of bed aren’t the condos being built, it’s not the threat of Snoke firing him for not completing the project on time. It’s not even the money. 

It’s the hope that there will be a letter in his mailbox, from a woman he’s never met, and likely never will. 

On his way back to the trailer, his eyes land on a dozen infant trees waiting to be planted. 

* * *

A clap of thunder clatters overhead as Rey rounds the corner. Her building is in sigh but there’s no chance she’ll make it in before it starts to rain. The second she takes off running, another clap of thunder sounds and a flash of lightning sends the skyline into a yellow glow. 

She digs around for her keys in her purse, the rain water soaking through her clothes, dripping between her shoulder blades. 

Another clap sounds. 

The rain stops and it gets noticeably darker around her. 

She has her keys in her hands and hesitates for a second, looking up to the sky before unlocking the door. 

Above her there are leaves. The wind passes around her and gets caught in the branches, leaving a light rustle in its wake. 

Rey can’t help but let a smile consume her face. She closes her eyes, reveling in the scent of the earth and life coming off its limbs. 

* * *

In the same moment, Ben sticks the shovel into the earth at his feet and looks at the barren branches of the tree before him, satisfied. 

“There you go, Rey,” he says to himself quietly. “Take care of her.”

He dusts his hands on his pants and picks up the shovel, dragging it behind him as he makes his way back to his truck. 

* * *

“Thank you.” She feels a swelling in her chest that rises up and clamps around her throat. There are a thousand tiny tears erupting from her eyes, making their way down to water the tree’s roots. “Thank you, Ben.”


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so sorry that I have been lazy with my posting schedule. One would think that having it all written would make it easier...but I guess this just goes to show that some things are habit regardless of circumstance. 
> 
> I'm glad to hear there are other people who love this movie as much as I do. Hopefully you don't mind that I stuck pretty closely to the plot with little divergence. And to whoever pointed out the inconsistency with the train ride -- blame the screenwriter first, then me for not double checking they had their facts straight hahaha (kidding, kind of!) I haven't been to Chicago in years and I am not going to lie. I didn't spend much time fact checking. Sorry if that bothers you! Hopefully you can look past it <3

“So this is where you’ve been hiding?” 

Poe wanders around the house, looking out each of the windows and dragging his hands across the back of the couch. He makes his way over to the tree in the center of the room and marvels at the way the leaves have fallen to the ground and create a scattering of art across the wood floor. 

“It’s beautiful,” he says after a moment. Ben is standing in the front doorway, a silent observer to the awe consuming Poe. “Not at all where I would expect you to be. I always figured you’d live somewhere dark and modern. Broody. When was it built?”

“Eighties. You want a beer?”

“Sure,” Poe says, stepping away from the tree and walking backward until he’s at the window furthest from the door. He turns and stares out across the lake. “It’s perfect.”

“Actually, it’s not,” Ben says as he makes his way back from the kitchen with two beers. He hands one to Poe and calls over his shoulder for Eight. The little corgi trots over and Ben picks her up, taking her with him as he ascends a spiral staircase in the far left corner of the house. Poe follows, still in absolute awe as he peeks out each of the windowed walls at the various angles of the lake. 

When they reach the roof, it’s breezy but there’s a newfound perspective.

Ben puts Eight down and she cowers close to his feet. 

“Don’t wander off,” he warns her gently. When he stands back at his full height, he reclaims Poe’s attention and gestures out toward the lake. It disappears around a corner, seemingly going on forever. The sun is setting in the distance and there’s a beautiful reflection cast across the water’s surface. 

“You can’t swim,” Ben says after a moment. “There should be a porch off the back. A stairway down to the water. Something that connects you to everything else. Here, you’re just…”

“Nah,” Poe says, cutting him off. “It would ruin the aesthetic. There’s a clear line now, a division that feels right for—” 

“There’s no connection.” 

Poe stops and takes a drink then nods his head after he’s had a second to think about it. 

“Sure,” he says. “We’re not really talking about the house, are we?”

“No, no, we are,” Ben says. 

He takes a drink of his own beer but there’s something absent in the way he’s looking out across the water. Poe can see it there too, but he doesn’t want to press too firmly. 

“All right, I didn’t come out here just to drown you in my detached design preferences. What have you been up to? Are you seeing anybody?”

Ben tosses his head back and forth, hesitating, then says, “No, you know.” 

It’s clear Poe does  _ not  _ know, nor was he expecting that answer. 

“You hesitated,” he says. He points the bottle and his index finger at Ben and leans back a little in shock. “Why did you hesitate?”

“It’s nothing. There’s someone, but…it’s nothing.”

Poe takes another drink. “Doesn’t sound like nothing.”

As they stand there looking out over the lake, Ben can’t help but think of Rey and the lake house and what it might be like if they’d been able to meet in the same time period. He’d be lying if he said he hadn’t considered looking her up now, trying to find her and introduce himself. But it doesn’t feel right. It wouldn’t be organic. 

After a few minutes, Poe clears his throat and amends a statement he’d made when they first reached the rooftop.

“I see what you mean,” he says. “I do wish I could dip my feet in the water. There’s a sense of isolation and entrapment without something forming that connection. It’s too lonely here.”

Ben nods his head. “Exactly.”

“Do you think you’ll stay?”

“For now. Not sure what the future holds.” 

“Well, maybe you should start thinking about the future…maybe there’s a Mrs. Solo waiting for you there.”

Ben can’t help but laugh.

* * *

“You’re nothing if not persistent, huh?” Rey says into her phone. She’s scooping food into Eight’s bowl and has it pinched between her shoulder and her ear. This time when the phone rang, her caller-id popped up with a warning.  _ Don’t Answer _ . “I don’t know why I don’t listen to myself,” she mumbles. 

“I’m in town, that’s all,” the voice says on the other end. 

“You just  _ happen _ to be in Chicago?”

“You know how work is. I’m traveling all the time, hit a lot of cities.”

“Exactly. That’s why we didn’t work out. You’re never around, and when you are, you drag me out to do this stuff. My free time is very valuable.”

There’s a deep sigh and a long pause. Rey leans back against the counter and stretches her feet out until her foot is parallel to the cabinet across from her. 

“Have dinner with me.”

Her foot slams to the floor. 

“Not a good idea.” 

“Why not?”

“Because.” It’s a terrible reason, and she knows it, but it’s a reason all the same. She turns and rests her elbows on the counter. There in the corner by the coffee maker is an open letter from Ben. She pulls it over and rereads some of the words on the page as  _ Don’t Answer _ rambles on the other end of the line about why it’s in fact a very good idea for them to get together over dinner. 

“Come on, just one dinner. It’s a defined amount of time, we can catch up, I can get the closure I so clearly crave, and then when the check comes, you’ll be free to go and won’t ever have to see me again.”

“Mmm…” Rey says. 

She imagines what talking on the phone with Ben would be like. If he’d be pushy or more complacent. She wonders if maybe she wouldn’t mind him being pushy.  _ I bet he’d push me into all the right places _ , she thinks. Her blood starts to run a little warmer and she has to stand up, pushing the letter back against the wall.  _ Stop it,  _ she warns herself. 

She drags herself back to the current conversation. 

“If I say yes, do you promise to leave me alone? I’m starting to get the sense you didn’t take me seriously when I said I didn’t want to date anymore.”

“I promise.”

She thinks about it for a minute. Spins and looks out the window at the city of Chicago, big and bold and bustling and somehow… terribly lonely. 

“I guess one dinner wouldn’t kill me.”

“It won’t, I promise. I’ll be on my best behavior. Are you free tonight?”

“Tonight?” Rey checks the time. It’s already quarter past five. But she doesn’t have to be at work until nine the following morning and she  _ would _ rather get this over with. “What time?”

“I can meet you in a half hour. If that’s not too soon.”

“Is this an ambush?”

“No. Just dinner.”

* * *

As it turns out, it’s not  _ just dinner _ . 

Hux tries to take her to an upscale restaurant and is shut down almost immediately. 

“No one gets a table here,” Rey says, trying to console him without looking too amused. “They stay booked months out.”

They walk down the street together and Rey is surprised by how easy it is to be in his company. It’s been so long since she’s actually spent time with someone, socially and in person (aside from Kaydel, though that seems different for some reason) that she’d almost forgotten what casual conversation felt like. Eventually they stop at a food truck and get street tacos. Rey’s mouth is watering before they hit her tongue and it’s turning out to be…not that terrible of an evening. 

“This is not going as I planned,” Hux says after a while. They’re seated on a bench watching people walk, somehow managing to be in each other’s company without ripping each other’s throats out. 

“You weren’t here for business, were you?” 

Hux has the decency to look ashamed. 

“Guilty. I thought if I were here for a meeting, I could stumble into you. We could get coffee, coffee would turn to dinner, dinner would turn to…”

“What?”

“Anything,” he says quickly. He scoffs. “Anything would be better than this blunt, cold break you’ve deemed a ‘friendship’.”

“Tig, I asked you point blank if this was an ambush and you said no.”

“It wasn’t—”

“It was. Another one. You did this all the time when we were together. The week after we met, you had our whole lives mapped out. I was in school, you were picking out real estate. I’d be away for school, come back for the weekend, and you’d have the whole neighborhood over for a party.”

“I wanted them to see you, it was your birthday.”

“Tig. I didn’t know them. They were your friends. I’m pretty sure you didn’t even know some of them longer than the day-of.”

“As I remember it, you didn’t seem to mind those folks. At least I didn’t make out with someone that night.”

“Do not start with that again.” She gives him a warning glare, and there it is. They’re back at it again. “I did not  _ make out  _ with him—it was a  _ kiss _ , one—and he was just some random guy  _ you  _ invited. Plus it was years ago, I can’t believe you’re still bringing that up.”

Hux shakes his head and stares at the ground.

“I don’t want to fight. I just wanted to see how you were, really. I spend a lot of time wondering…if I’d moved to Chicago with you, instead of staying in Wisconsin, working at the firm, if things would have…”

“They wouldn’t have ended any differently,” Rey says. “It always would have gone this way. I hope you can realize that and not feel badly about it.”

“Yeah,” he says, sounding sorry for himself. “I’m sorry I called. I never should have pressured you into going out.”

Rey leans into his shoulder, giving him a light nudge. She’s thinking of Ben and the feeling she gets when she opens the mailbox and there’s a letter waiting for her. She thinks of the feeling she gets when she runs her hands over the pencil markings of his writing on a page. Of the feeling she had walking these same city streets with Hux by her side juxtaposed to the feeling she’d had with the mere thought of Ben walking with her. 

“Don’t be upset about it,” she says thoughtfully. “I think I needed this too.”

* * *

“This has come a far way from what it was,” Snoke says, a slithery voice in Ben’s ear. He reaches out and pushes the front door open, holding it until Ben has passed out into the balmy summer air first. “You’ve done a fine job with this project. I have to tell you, I didn’t think you’d pull it off. Scrappy, disorganized, unprofessional little thing you were when I found you. But you’ve managed to do it.”

Ben has to force himself to smile like any of the things the short, balding man just said were a compliment. 

“Thank you, sir.”

“Phasma,” Snoke says, calling over the tall blonde foreman from where she was standing at the edge of the yard. She gives Ben a discerning look as she steps forward. 

“Yes, Sir?”

“You’ve got one down and forty to go. What are you going to do to make sure this project moves forward as planned without veering off the expected trajectory?”

“Our fearless leader has a secure plan and you’ll see no complaints from me,” she says. She gives Ben a glance out of the corner of her eye and he knows he’ll be getting an earful later. Poor Mitaka will bear the brunt of any dissatisfaction she has in the hierarchical balance of the situation. 

Snoke moves on to lay his weighted hands on the small people of the project and while Phas isn’t looking, Ben sneaks off to his truck. 

He’s about half way between the completed condo and the street when Bazine pops up next to him, bubbly and bouncing and too happy. 

“Congratulations,” she blurts as she rushes to keep in pace beside him. 

“Thanks,” he mumbles. “One down, forty to go.” He blanches, hearing himself say the same words Snoke just spit at him. “We’re not terrifyingly behind schedule, just…alarmingly so.”

Eight is in the bed of the truck, little tail wagging. She reaches up on the side and Ben lifts her into his arms. He pulls open the driver’s side door, depositing Eight on the seat and Bazine walks around the front so that she can get in the passenger side. Ben stares at her for a minute, hesitating half in, half out. 

“What are you doing?”

“I’m kind of pissed at you, you know,” she says, plopping into the seat and throwing both her feet up on the dashboard. 

Ben stands there, leaning on the door, refusing to get in while she’s seated there, unsure of what it would imply if he did. 

“Why?”

“You told me to buy these boots and you haven’t even told me how much you like them.” She wiggles her feet and he notices for the first time that she’s wearing a pair of gaudy red cowboy boots. 

“Right,” he says, mustering up a laugh. “Not exactly what I had in mind.”

“Well, don’t you like them?”

Ben looks at them for a moment and can’t help but let his gaze carry up her leg toward the hem of her skirt. She squirms under his gaze and her skirt rides up. It breaks his stare and he shifts his gaze to her face. He can’t tell if it was intentional or not, but with the way she’s looking at him, he can’t say he cares. 

“Yeah,” he says finally. “I like them.”

She grins. 

Ben’s about to get in the car when Eight suddenly growls and stands up. Before Ben even knows what to think of the little thing growling like that, she jumps out of the truck onto the sidewalk, taking off down the street. 

“What the—” Ben says, moving back and looking off toward where she’s headed. “Hey! Eight?” 

“That little guy can really run,” Bazine says from inside the truck. “Get in, we’ll drive after him.”

“She can’t run  _ that  _ fast.” Ben shuts the car door and starts running off down the street after the dog. When she’s headed up over a hill and he loses sight of her, Ben rethinks his assessment. Maybe she  _ is _ that fast. 

“Ben, wait for me!”

He casts a look behind him and finds Bazine struggling along in her boots. He only waits for her to catch up long enough for him to catch his breath. It gives him just enough of an opportunity to glance around the perimeter of the hill he’s found himself on. Down the way is the start of a residential neighborhood. He catches the tuft of Eight's tail bobbing down the street. 

“HEY!” he hollers, heading off in the direction of the homes without Bazine. 

Eight darts across someone’s yard, headed toward the back and presumably deeper into the neighborhood. A man in his mid to late twenties is unloading the back of his car with a handful of beer crates and bags and manages to set them down just in time to catch the dog before she has the chance to get away. 

Ben’s long strides bring him up to the car, panting, not too much later. 

“This your dog?”

“Yes,” Ben says between breaths, bending over, hands on his knees, sucking in air. “Yes, she is.”

“Might want to keep her leashed up. Looks like she’s a runner.”

“Thank you.” Ben reaches out and takes Eight from the man. He stares for a moment, trying to place him. “She’s never run off like that, believe it or not. I don’t even have a lead.”

“What’s her name?” He reaches out and pets her. She gives the two men a dopey, open-mouthed grin, content now to go wherever Ben should lead her. 

“Eight.”

“Hi, Eight. I should get a little thing like you for my girlfriend. She loves dogs.”

Ben nods at the pile of groceries which have been forgotten on the ground. He reaches out his free hand and offers it. 

“Ben,” he says. “Have we met before?”

The other man takes his hand and gives it one solid shake. 

“Armitage Hux. No one calls me Armitage though.”

“Nice to meet you. Thanks for grabbing my dog. Can I give you a hand with that?”

“If she won’t run off again, sure. I’d appreciate it.” 

Ben sizes Eight up for a minute then puts her on the ground where she sits, content to watch them lift and carry the countless boxes from the driveway to the house. 

Hux lifts a box while Ben stacks two and lifts them both. The red headed man takes him in appreciatively. 

“What do you do, Ben?”

“I’m an architect. Working on the condos down the road.” He nods over his shoulder and as he does, he spots Bazine hobbling down the road, one of her boots held in her hand, the other causing noticeable discomfort. He follows Hux inside the house. “You?” 

“I do real estate law mostly. Some wills, some family law. Whatever’s needed really. I’m actually interviewing with a pretty big firm. Excited about it. Seems promising, lots of room for growth and refinement.” 

Ben doesn’t have to offer much in the way of conversation as Hux seems to do a pretty good job of managing it on his own. When they reach the kitchen, they deposit the cases and return to the front yard where Bazine is petting Eight. The dog looks as if she’s in pain. 

“Thank god, you found him,” she says. Ben gives her a silent nod and her expression falls flat. 

“I actually just moved here,” Hux says. “How long have you two lived in the area?”

“Oh, we’re not—” Ben gestures between himself and Bazine. “We’re not a couple.”

She looks stricken and disappointed but tries to keep a smile plastered firmly on her face. 

“Sorry, my mistake. Like the area?”

“Yeah.” Ben nods his head. “I just bought a place on the lake, a few miles outside Chicago.”

“That’s a bit of a drive from here, isn’t it?”

“A bit, but it’s worth it. Great view.”

Hux lifts the bags and stares off into the distance for a second, lost to his own thoughts. 

“Rey would love the lake. She’s always going on about how much she hates the city.”

It takes Ben a moment to place the words, but when he does, he places Hux’s face too. He wasn’t expecting them, especially not here, of all places. Not now. He forms a thoughtful look on his face. It’s not an especially common name, and now that he has the context for placement, he’d know that ginger beard anywhere. 

“Just so you don’t think I’m planning on drinking all this by myself, I’m having a little bit of a party. Just a few friends. Locals. You’re welcome to come by.” 

Hux is gesturing between the two of them and it forces Ben to exchanges a glance with Bazine.

“Yeah,” he says easily, the thought of Rey the only thing on his mind. “Maybe we will.”

Bazine seems surprised, her mild look turning into an actual smile at the thought of plans with Ben. 

“All right,” Hux says, offering Ben his hand again. “It was nice to meet you. Oh—Ben.” He sits the bags down and reaches into his back pocket, pulling out his wallet. “Here, take my card. In case you ever decide to sell. I might be looking to rent a place on the lake.” He gives him a wink and a raised eyebrow. 

“Right, for your girlfriend. Rey, you said?”

“Yeah, she’s in med school right now, but she’ll be in for the weekend. Today’s her birthday.” He picks up the bags again and gives them a little extra raise. “Thus the party.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is one of my favorite moments <3 hope you enjoy

The neon sign for The Cove flickers behind the bar, flashing red light against all the glasses stacked beneath it. Rey reaches both arms out until they’re fully extended and looks around. It’s mostly dead, though that makes sense considering the hour. Nearly midnight. In just a few minutes, Rey will be one year closer to thirty. 

A short woman with bottle cap glasses and a hard look mills up to her with a rag in one hand and a wet glass in the other. 

“You look like you need something that’ll light a fire under your ass,” she says. 

Rey’s eyes widen. 

“I—”

“Gin and tonic, Maz,” Leia says from behind Rey. “And, don’t go too heavy on the gin. She has to work tomorrow.” Rey lets out a sigh as Leia sits beside her. “I thought I told you to get as far away from here as you can when you’re not on the clock.”

“Why don’t you ever take your own advice?”

Leia lets out a chuckle and Maz does the same as the places two slim glasses on the bar top, one in front of each of them. 

“Sorry,” Rey says, letting her head fall forward to the bar top. “That was rude and uncalled for.”

“It’s all right.” Leia puts a hand on her back and rubs a few small circles. “You look like you need someone to talk to. So let’s talk.”

* * *

“Why are we here, Ben?” Bazine asks, a little pouty. “Let’s just go to dinner. Or dancing, you look like you could lift a girl. Take me dancing.”

He pulls the truck up to the curbside. The house they were at earlier that day is a mess with people, yellow light and loud music spilling out of the windows and doors and cracks and crevices. They both stare inside. 

“We’ll just stay for an hour.”

“This better be good,” she says.

* * *

They hear Hux before they see him. When they walk it, it’s obvious that they’re among the few who aren’t related to him through some kind of close friendship. 

“You wouldn’t catch me dead in Chicago,” he says loudly from the back of the room. Ben weaves through people, headed his direction, and Bazine follows behind him, her hand tight on his jacket like a toddler about to be lost. “I grew up here, you’d have to be crazy to live anywhere else. I mean—” He catches Ben’s face through a part in the crowd and stops mid sentence. “Hey! You came!”

Excusing himself, he makes his way over and takes their coats. 

“There’s beer in the kitchen—well, you know that.” He laughs, and it’s a terrible sound. “Help yourselves. Mingle. There are snacks…” He glances around the room lazily, apparently a few drinks in himself. “There are snacks literally all over the place.” It makes him laugh and Bazine gives Ben a look that says,  _ This? This is why we came? _

* * *

Leia raises her hand and signals for Maz to bring another round. 

“According to my late husband, it is socially unacceptable for one to drink alone after 10PM—without a reasonable excuse, that is. So. What’s yours?”

Rey lets out a breathy laugh and takes the glass when Maz offers it. “I guess I don’t have one,” she says. 

“I do,” Leia says. She too takes the drink Maz hands her and brings it straight to her lips. “I am alone in this world, therefore, I have no one to drink with.”

Rey nods slowly, unsure as to whether or not it is appropriate for her to feel sympathetic and appreciative of the statement. 

“I’m sorry,” she says. 

“Don’t be. You’re also alone, are you not? We can drink together, then neither of us has to feel bad about drinking alone.” She leans in closer, her shoulder resting against Rey’s. Her voice is thick and heavy with years of smoking when she whispers. “Or past ten.”

This makes Rey laugh and it breaks the tension of her previous statement. They sit like this, Leia leaning into Rey a little, and Rey happy to have the company, until the words are so close to spilling out of Rey’s mouth that she nearly chokes on them. 

“Okay, I do have an excuse.”

“Ah, I thought so.”

* * *

Ben pulls his lips in as he looks around the room, over what feels like one hundred heads. 

They make their way to the kitchen and leave with two beers and a plate of chips and queso. At some point, someone knocks into Bazine and spills salsa on her dress. She makes sure Ben knows and tries to get him to wipe it up. 

They pass through four different rooms and Rey isn’t in a single one. 

Ben manages to force the stain further into the fabric. He gets his hand slapped. 

All in all, it’s not exactly the night he envisioned, but it could be worse. 

They’re seated between a couple on the couch in the middle of the room, Ben’s knees up to his ears and Bazine’s face pinched in a perpetual pout, when Hux rushes in from the back patio, only somewhat sobered since their last encounter. 

“I’m not feeling very well,” Bazine whispers. “Will you please get our coats?”

“All right, all right,” Ben mutters, half to her, half to himself. He’s fed up with Bazine’s moping, and even more fed up with himself for getting excited that the night might turn out any other way than how it is right now. 

“Everyone quiet! Quiet!” Hux shouts over everyone talking. He reaches out to the switch on the wall and cuts the lights across the first floor just as Ben stands up. 

A hush falls over the room. After a moment, the front door opens and a shadowed figure walks through the door, a bag over one shoulder and a sack of books in the other. There’s just enough light coming in off the street to see her face. 

_ Rey _ . 

Hux flips on the lights and a chorus of, “Happy Birthday!” rings out through the room. Someone carries a cake filled with blazing candles in from the kitchen as Rey stands, dumbstruck in the doorway. She has a smile where one ought to be, but something about it seems forced. It is clear that she does not want to be here. She and Bazine have never resembled each other more.

* * *

“Why didn’t you mention it was your birthday earlier? We would have gotten a cake, celebrated. Kaydel would have hung steamers.” 

The thought really does tickle Rey, that some people would want that. 

“That’s exactly why I didn’t,” she says, taking a sip of her gin and tonic. “It’s just…time, passing.” 

“Yes, but I had to learn a long time ago that, sometimes, celebrating isn’t about you, it’s about those around you. Kaydel will be heartbroken when she finds out.”

“I’m sure she’ll get over it.”

“You keep a lot to yourself, Ms. Niima.” 

“Mmm.” It’s all she can muster. She feels overly tired tonight—maybe it’s because of the alcohol, but somehow, she doubts it. 

“There’s nothing wrong with that, of course,” Leia adds. “Forgive me, if I’m overstepping, but I’ve sometimes wondered what else you have in your life. Any family at all? A boyfriend maybe? Girlfriend?”

Rey takes another drink. 

“I have a dog. Used to have a boyfriend. No family.”

“That must get lonely.”

“There are good days and there are…not so good days.”

* * *

As Hux drags Rey around the house, introducing her to people here and there, everyone wishing her a happy birthday, he watches her face. 

Bazine is still on the couch, locked in conversation she can’t escape with Doug and Linda (post-doctorate scholars in biomechanics). He’ll have to come with an excuse as to why he’s holding their coats but hasn’t come to save her yet, but that’s something he’ll worry about when the time times. For now, he’s content just taking everything in. 

There are only two couples between Hux and Rey and Ben, where he’s standing by the hallway which leads to the back room and the coats. There’s something that’s bothering him about the look on her face. She’s pained, and he can’t tell if it’s more to do with the fact that Hux has clearly blindsided her with this party, or the fact that it’s her birthday, or maybe something else all together. 

She’s holding her jaw too tight. All the relaxed, gentle happiness which had ignited her eyes at the train station has been replaced. He’d do anything to get the other look back, to make whatever’s causing her so much discomfort to go away. 

The last couple that stands between them dips out the back door, so when Hux puts his hand to Rey’s back (she flinches and it sets Ben’s teeth on edge), there’s no one to stop them from coming over to him. 

“Rey,” Hux says, guiding him over. “This is Ben, and,” he looks around him until he finds Bazine on the couch. He gestures her way with his hand. “Bazine. They’re going to get us a house on the lake.”

Ben’s eyes go wide at the statement.  _ He moves fast _ , he thinks. 

He exchanges his beer from one hand to the other and wipes his hand across his pants to dry it, then holds it out for her.

“Nice to meet you,” he says. 

She gives him a tight-lipped smile. “You as well.”

He’s seen her in person twice now, but this is the first time he’s heard her speak. There’s a cadence to her voice that reminds him of something she said in one of her earlier letters. 

“You’re British,” he says. He clears his throat. “Sorry, that was probably rude.”

For the first time since she’s entered the door, Rey breaks out into a real smile and a little laugh follows. 

“No, you’re fine. I am, but I assure you, I’m not trying to  _ steal _ anyone’s job. I’m here legally, and I have no malicious intent.”

Ben raises both hands in mock defense. “I wasn’t worried.” 

Hux notices their coats. “You’re not leaving, are you?”

“Well,” Ben says, drifting off…Bazine catches his eye and starts to put her plate down on the coffee table to stand from the couch. Hux wraps an arm around Rey and Ben’s muscles tense. “No, no.” He shakes his head at Bazine. “I was just going to step out for some fresh air. Wouldn’t want to leave before you’ve cut the cake.” 

It seems to be the wrong thing to say, bringing up her birthday. Rey’s face falters as if she’s just remembered why they’re all gathered here in this house in the first place—she and Hux and a couple of strangers. 

Ben wants to say so many things. He wants to ask her about med school, tell her how much she’s going to love the lake house, tell her the drive into the city isn’t so bad, that she should just stay there. That they should stay there  _ together _ . But the second any one of those things comes to mind, he remembers that Hux is standing beside her with his arm around her waist, and that in Rey’s mind, this is the first time they’ve ever met. The first time they’ve ever talked. 

It is likely that once this night is over, she won’t have any recollection of him at all. 

It stings. 

Eventually they carry on and Hux introduces her to a handful of other people in the living room before they disappear into the back of the house. 

Bazine is still talking to Linda, and while she isn’t looking, Ben puts his coat on and ducks out the front door to sit on the porch. 

It’s big, for a house in this neighborhood, and wraps well around the side of the house past the living room. The railing drops off at one end, so eases himself down and hangs his feet over the edge. There’s a window to his right, cracked at the bottom, the fresh wind pulling the curtains and the sound of those within. 

“Were you surprised?” someone asks. 

Ben makes a fist and tries not to listen in, but the following voice catches his ear and makes sense of what’s going on.

“Yes, of course I was surprised. I thought we were going to have a quiet night in. When are they leaving?”

“What’s wrong? I thought you’d be excited?”

“Excited? I had class all day, rounds at the hospital after, and then took a train here. Tig, it’s well past midnight. I would like to  _ sleep _ .” 

“These are my friends, Rey. They’d like to meet my girlfriend, and I’d like you to meet them.”

There’s a moment of rustling and it sounds like something is mumbled a huff, but Ben can’t make hide nor tail of what it might be. A moment later a door slams and there is silence.

* * *

“So this boyfriend,” Leia prompts. “Not good looking?”

Rey nods her head back and forth, tossing it around. “He was fine looking. Could grow a nice beard, I guess. If you’re into that sort of thing. Turns out I wasn’t. Wasn’t into the dictating either.” She leans a little closer, mimicking Leia’s motion from earlier, and lowers her voice, “Dick wasn’t even that good. Pretty,” she pinches her fingers until only a sliver of space is visible between them, “to be quite honest.” 

Leia laughs and down the bar, where she’s drying more glasses, Maz shakes her head. 

“Honey, I think you’ve had enough to drink.” 

“Just being honest,” Rey says, unapologetic. She stares at the neon lettering across from her, THE COVE, the bright, neon red imprinting itself across her retina. “He wanted me to move in with him when I finished med school. He rented this house, gorgeous place up north on a lake.”

“My husband built me a house on the lake,” Leia says fondly. “What happened?”

“Everything we did, it was always his plan. Anyway. I ended it.” She looks to Leia. “I stayed at the lake house though. I love it there.”

Something in Leia’s eyes softens as she looks at Rey. 

“So who do you write to?”

There is a beat between them. Leia tears her gaze away and looks down at her hands, splayed out across the bar top. 

“I couldn’t help but notice. Every time you get a break, you grab your pen and that notebook, go somewhere quiet. But you always rip the pages out. I figured you couldn’t be journaling. Letter writing, it’s a lost artform, you know.” Rey doesn’t say anything and the silence grows more cold. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said anything.” 

“No,” Rey says finally, pulling her gaze up to meet Leia’s. “There is someone. It’s kind of…a long distance thing.”

“Oh? Sometimes that’s nice. All the benefits, none of the drama. How long?”

“Almost a year,” Rey says, nodding. 

“How did you meet?” 

Rey chuckles. “Well, haven't yet. Not actually, anyway. You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.” 

“You haven’t met? You just write letters?”

“We just write letters.” 

“You’re kidding,” Leia says. She finishes off the drink that’s been sitting before her for the past several minutes getting warm. It has to be mostly melted ice at this point. “I’ll be damned.” 

“Story of my life,” Rey says. “Everything’s just out of reach. One guy’s right in front of me, offering me the world and I want nothing to do with it. The other? I’ll likely never meet him and…and him? I’d give it all up just for one walk through Chicago.” 

“So you’ve really never talked face to face?”

Rey runs her fingers along the rim of the glass in front of her, thinking about all the things she and Ben have shared. The alcohol is wearing off and she’s sobering. Somewhere in the transition a memory hits her. Something she’d thought of only briefly a few days ago. 

“Wait,” she says slowly, quietly, tilting her head, thinking a little harder. 


	10. Chapter 10

Ben is still sitting on the porch when the storm door opens with a whine then slams shut. A series of footsteps follow, the wood floor beneath them both creaking with the added weight. 

He turns around, out of curiosity, and finds Rey leaning against the far banister, looking out at the street and the series of cars lined up outside the house. 

It feels like an opportunity, but he knows he’ll only get the one. 

One chance. Timing may never be on their side again. 

He parts his mouth as if to speak, but she beats him to it. 

“If one more person wishes me a happy birthday, I’ll kill them.” 

“Right,” he says, closing his mouth. 

“So.” She pushes off the post and comes over to sit beside him on the porch. “What are you really doing here? Trying to sell Tig a property? You’re really dedicated to your work, I have to give it to you. A stranger’s birthday party certainly isn’t my idea of a good time.”

“Actually,” Ben says, clearing his throat, “I was hoping to meet someone.”

“Ahh…he’s always got something up his sleeve. Prospective buyer?”

“Something like that.” 

“So, you’re going to get us a house on the lake?”

Ben clears his throat and presses his hands down across his legs, wiping off some of the sweat that’s begun to accumulate there. “Yeah, that’s the plan.” After a moment, he adds, “You’re going to move in after I leave. You’ll love it there.” 

She narrows her eyes and tilts her head back. She’s surveying him, truly looking at him for the first time. 

“So you live there now?”

“Yes, I do.”

She nods, then cranes her neck to look back at the far end of the porch where the front door is bumping from the sound within and there’s a window cracked, letting most of the noise leech into the street and their shared silence. 

“You’d better get back inside, if you’re going to meet whoever it is you came here for.”

Ben follows her gaze, thinks for a moment. He’s starting to feel like he’s losing his grip on the conversation, if there ever really was one. 

“What makes you think I’d like this lake house?”

The question, or rather the lead for more of a conversation instead of cutting him off and pushing him away, catches Ben off guard. 

“It’s beautiful,” he starts, thinking of all the letters they’ve shared, the things she’s mentioned loving most about the lake house. “There’s a tree that grows straight up through the middle of the house, both the spine and the life of the entire thing. It brings the seasons inside and forms a connection with the earth. The walls are all made of glass…” He hesitates, taking a careful breath. The whole situation falls heavily on his shoulders. “It’s hard to keep it warm in the winter, but if you get a lot of blankets, and a good dog to help you keep warm, you’ll make it through.” 

“Can you swim?”

“Sure, I took lessons when I was younger.”

“No,” she laughs, looking for the first time as if she’s not absolutely hating her life this evening. “Can you swim from the lake house? Is there a deck or a dock or something that goes out into the water?”

Ben gives her an apologetic look. “That’s its only flaw.” 

She resigns herself to this knowledge and accepts it as easily as one might accept a passing conversation. 

“It’s getting awfully late. Is your girlfriend doing all right in there by herself?”

Ben instinctively turns to look at the door, remembering Bazine. “She’s not my—” He makes a gesture with his hand. “We’re not together. She’s fine.” 

“Oh, sorry. My bad, I assumed, when—never mind.”

“Rey?”

“Yes?”

“Have you read  _ Persuasion _ ?” 

She’s physically taken aback and gives him an uneasy stare, her eyes glossing over his features, trying to see between the lines and sort out his angle. 

“Why would you ask me that?”

If Ben thought he was losing control of the situation before, all bets are off now. He’s spiraling, second guessing everything he’s said and done up until this point in the evening. It was a mistake to have come here. They had a balance, exchanging letters, keeping their distance, both of them living their individual lives in their own timelines. But now…he’s trying to bridge that gap, he’s reaching out to her on the platform, begging her to see him, and she can’t, and that’s no fault of her own. It’s timing—it’s all about timing. 

So, that’s what he says. 

“I was just thinking about timing this evening, that’s all. It’s a good book, came to mind.”

It seems to settle her. He can feel the tension which rose through her a moment ago dissipate and it helps him relax too.

“It’s my favorite book,” she says honestly, something else clearly on the tip of her tongue to follow. Ben doesn’t say a word, just watches the way she looks out into the distance of the yard, her lips parted in a half-formed thought. Here are freckles across her nose, a rose tint to her cheeks. She isn’t wearing a bit of makeup. He wants to press into those soft lips until they’re bruised, steal her breath and keep it for himself. 

“This is perhaps too much to share with someone I don’t know at all, but…” She eyes him carefully before continuing. “I never knew my parents. There’s a certain sentiment expressed in  _ Persuasion  _ that has given me a bit of comfort over the years. _ Time will explain _ . You’re right, it’s about timing. But, it’s also about waiting. I like to hope that if I wait long enough, timing will be on my side in the end. Even if it wasn’t from the start.”

Rey’s eyes are heavy, whether from physical tiredness or an emotional one, Ben can’t tell. Without thinking, he reaches out and pushes her hair back, out of her face, and lets the pad of his thumb remain at her temple, his fingers wound tightly at the back of her head, secure. 

“That sounds sad,” he says quietly. 

“It’s not, not in the end.”

His thumb trails down across her check, then over her lips. She inclines her head and they’re only inches apart, breathing the same air, tasting the same heavy silence. 

When their lips meet in a long, lingering kiss, Ben isn’t sure if it’s him or her who’s closed the gap. 

“I’m sorry,” she says, suddenly pulling away and covering her mouth with her hand. Her fingers rest gently on her lips, feeling the empty weight of him there. “I don’t know why I did that.”

Ben rushes to save whatever he can, feeling like he’s already ruined any real chance he had. 

“I can’t try to explain—” He reaches out to her again, to hold her, to stop her from running, to feel her beneath his fingers, just one last time, and…she doesn’t pull away, but she doesn’t lean into it. 

The storm door opens again behind them and, this time hurried footsteps and the two voices Ben could possibly want to hear the least in this moment. 

“I thought I saw you come out—” Bazine stops short. 

“Rey?” Hux sounds confused, then after assessing the scene before him a bit longer, there’s an offended tone to his words. “What’s going on out here?”

“Oh, Tig, hey.” Rey pulls herself away from Ben and stands. “Ben was just telling me about the lake house. It sounds really great.” She looks down at Ben who is still seated at the edge of the porch, stricken. She gives him a sympathetic look. “You found a good one.”

“Great,” Hux says. 

“We’re definitely interested,” Rey adds. It’s unnecessary, but Ben gives her nod anyway. 

Bazine clears her throat. “Well, Ben, I think we ought to be headed out. It’s getting late.” He stands and offers Rey is hand. She shakes it, lingering only a second longer than she ought to. Her cheeks tinge again and Ben has to pull himself away. When he offers his hadn’t to Hux, it’s left lingering out in the open for too long. Eventually Bazine takes it and drags him down the porch steps. 

“Please don’t forget to reach out when you’re ready to move,” Rey says after them. 

Ben turns around from the edge of the driveway, his gaze lingering on her a moment too long. “I’ll be in touch,” he says back, loud enough for them to hear. Then, to himself, he adds, “I promise.”

Bazine bites her lip and links her arm with his, but there’s a different sense to the way she holds him now. 

“Come on, big guy,” she says quietly. 

“I’m sorry,” he says as they walk away. “I don’t know—”

“It’s okay.” They walk in amicable silence until they reach the truck. Ben opens her door and she looks at him woefully as she gets in. His eyes are trained on the house no matter where he’s positioned. When they’re headed back down the highway toward any place that isn’t Hux’s neighborhood, Bazine whispers quietly into the cabin, “I understand now.”

Ben looks over quizzically, pulled from his thoughts. 

“Why we went to the party,” she adds. “I understand.”

* * *

Rey’s in a cab with Leia beside her. Evidently she can’t be trusted to get herself home. 

There’s only the tiniest bit of light coming in through the windows as they drive down the street, the overhead lights and signs from the buildings they pass coming in spotted and flashy. It’s enough though, for her to see a page and make the same careless scratchings she’s been sending to Ben for months now. 

She digs in her tote bag until she finds the notebook and keeps her hand in a moment longer, searching for a pen. When she has to bend down and actually stick her head by her knees to physically look for it, Leia puts a hand at her shoulder. 

Rey leans up and Leia is offering a pen. 

“Thank you,” Rey says meekly. 

She cracks the notebook open and that’s why her chest starts to clench up, squeezing the oxygen straight out of her lungs. 

> _ My god. That was you.  _
> 
> _ I remember you—why didn’t you tell me who you were?  _
> 
>   
  


Ben sits in the cab of his pickup with Eight at his side on the bench. 

> _ Rey. I would have sounded insane. There’s no way you would have believed me. Why would you?  _

> _ But—I liked you. That was our chance. You should have said something.  _

> _ What about your boyfriend? _

> _ What about your  _ _ girlfriend _ ? 

> _ Not _ _ my girlfriend. Never has been. _

> _ Well, he isn’t my boyfriend.  _

> _ He is though—maybe not in your ‘now’, but he is in my time. My now. See, I sound crazy even though we both know what I’m saying. There’s no way you would have accepted anything I had to say that night.  _

> _ Maybe something would have been different though, if you had said something. Maybe…I don’t know, maybe there wouldn’t be a your now and my now—it would just be ours. Don’t you want that?  _

> _ I do. God, Rey. You know I do. More than anything. _

  
  


In her apartment, Rey reads over this last letter and lets out a groan of frustration. 

“It’s not fair,” she says to Eight who has the decency to sigh and sink to the ground, in mourning for what might have been. Rey sinks down to the floor beside her and lays until she’s flat on her back, looking up to the ceiling. She can see a sliver of sky out the window behind them and tilts her gaze until that’s all she’s looking at. Stars, or maybe satellites or airplanes, seem to blink on and off, an eternal dance of light and dark, never meeting anywhere in the middle.

Or, if they do, it’s only for a split second —so quick that it’s over before it’s even started. 

The whole world could continue to exist for hundreds of thousands of years and no one would ever know they had ever come together, because remaining so is so futile it’s nearly impossible.

* * *

At the lake house, Ben watches the same sky, just a few years earlier. It’s overcast but a few specs of light are making their way through the darkness. It’s the closest thing you could probably have to existing in a world with both. 

Below him, below the roof, there are packed boxes waiting to be loaded into the U-Haul which will arrive early the following morning. 

He reaches out and rests his hand between Eight’s shoulder blades, tracing a small circle there. She sighs and rolls over, leaning her back against his side, opening her belly to him. 

“You’ll take good care of her, right?”

Eight sighs again. 

“I’m going to miss you, you know.”

He closes his eyes, focuses on the scent of fresh rain in the air. He should get going, before it starts to pour. 

Eight stretches and stands, then puts her face to Ben’s and starts to lick away the salty residue covering his cheeks. 

“She’s going to need you more than I do,” he reasons. “And that’s really saying something.”


	11. Chapter 11

Ben wakes in his new apartment to the sound, not of his alarm, but his phone ringing. He rolls over, groggy and reaches around on the bedside table until he finds it, swiping across the screen until it picks up.

“Hello?”

“Ben,” Poe says on the other end. His tone makes Ben push himself up and rub a hand over his face. 

“What time is it?”

“Early,” Poe says. He gives him a minute before continuing. “Ben, something terrible has happened. You’d better get dressed and come down to the Cook County Hospital.”

* * *

Ben has always hated hospitals. He spent a lot of time in and out when he was younger, not because of any terminal illness, or otherwise, but due to his mother’s career. She was at work more than she was home, and that meant Ben was either in her office or Han’s, or by himself at home. There’s a reason he followed his dad’s footsteps. Even if it didn’t turn out exactly as either of them had imagined. 

When he first heard Rey was a doctor, he’d been reminded of his less than favorable time spent there. 

To enter the very same four walls, willingly, says a lot about how far he’s come. 

It’s sterile, cold and formal in a way that is the furthest thing from inviting, which has always seemed like such an odd thing, for when you’re sick or dying. 

When he reaches the room that’s brought him all this way and actually forced him to enter this specific brand of hell again, he stops. There’s a small rectangular window and on the other side, a few shadows standing around a bed. 

He paces outside the door until someone pulls it open from the other side. Ben stops and looks up, meeting Poe’s gaze. 

“He wants to see you.”

“No, he doesn’t,” Ben corrects. 

Poe pulls the door closed behind him, holding the knob. “He does, Ben. Your mom’s inside, too.”

Ben lets out a low breath. 

He hasn’t seen or spoken to either of them in years. To do so now, it would mean…that whatever comes next is big. Bigger than he’s prepared to admit. Bigger than he can probably deal with. He casts his eyes down, and on his way to inspect the tile at his feet, he spots a stack of books in Poe’s arms. 

“What are those?”

Poe seems to remember them for the first time. He lifts them in acknowledgement. 

“His course material. He says he wants to keep working.”

“He had a heart attack. Like hell he’s going to keep working, don’t leave those in there.”

Poe shakes his head then comes forward and leaves the books in Ben’s arms. 

“Tell him yourself.”

Ben stands outside the door for another moment. It takes Leia opening it and giving him a watery smile for him to finally push himself forward and enter the threshold. 

The scent of imminent death is stronger on the other side. 

He catches sight of Han, laying there in the bed, beneath a quintessential hospital blanket that comes standard with every room in the building, and for the first time, he realizes how old, how feeble and  _ small _ his father has become. He’s gaunt. Cheeks sinking in, tired eyes, tired features. Even lifting his arm to motion for Ben to come forward seems to take a lot of effort. More than he has to give. 

“What happened?” Ben asks.

“Nothing,” Han says. 

“It’s clearly not  _ nothing _ ,” Ben counters.

Leia clears her throat. “Both of you, please. Not today.”

“It was just a little…they say it was a heart attack, but you know how it is.”

“Yeah,” Ben cuts, “Usually when they say it’s a heart attack, it’s a heart attack.”

Han throws Leia a look. 

“Ben,” she says quietly, holding out her hand. “Let’s take a walk.” 

She steps forward and puts her hand on his shoulder, ushering him out the door, but before either of them can get further than past the foot of the bed, Han makes an attempt to sit up and holds out his hand. 

“Leave those,” he says, motioning to the books in Ben’s hands. 

Ben looks at them for a second, hesitating. With a shake of his head and a scoff, he puts the stack on the table next to Han toward the head of the bed and follows Leia out the door. 

“What really happened?” he asks once they’ve wandered a little further down the hallway, away from prying eyes and listening ears. 

She stares out the window. “He had a minor heart attack.” She drags her eyes up to meet his. “It’s good to see you.”

“Mom…”

“I know.” She raises her hands defensively then folds them and puts one hand to her face, tapping the side of her cheek with her index finger in thought. “This family has never been much for opening up.”

She composes herself a little and puts on a professional face. 

“It was minor, not as bad as it could have been. That being said, he will need surgery. There’s something blocking his arteries and if we don’t clear it up now, this will just happen again. He’s too old, Ben. It’s not going to get any  _ better _ after this. I need you to know that. The best we can do is fix it for now. Hope it’s enough to carry him for the next few years. Hope is really…all we have.”

Ben gives himself the time to take it in. Leia seems to appreciate the time to catch her breath. She wipes a tear from her eye and retrains her stare on the view out the window. 

“Will you do the procedure?”

“No,” she says quickly. “I don’t think that’d be ethical, so you have no worries there.”

“Why wouldn’t that be ethical?”

“Conflict of interest.”

“Does that imply you’d be…rooting for him to die on the table? I don’t understand. You’re clearly the best candidate for this. Why not you?”

She lets out a deep breath and faces him again, her face stern. Ben shrivels a little under her stare, calling back to his childhood. 

“I’m not doing the procedure, Ben. Your father doesn’t want me to any more than I want to. I would have a hard time keeping a level head. Too many emotions to see straight. Shaky hands.” 

“Well, maybe you should reconsider. Be a second, or something. Don’t you want someone you know will do a good job?” He’s shaking his head in disbelief that his own mother wouldn’t want to oversee her husband’s heart surgery. 

“Ben,” Leia says, hushing her voice more than she already had been. “That’s a lot of responsibility to put on my shoulders. I know that makes me sound like a coward, maybe a poor surgeon. But I can’t bear the thought—should something not go as planned. I simply can’t bear that weight.” 

“You’re acting like he’s going to die. That’s—that’s not going to happen. It’s a routine procedure.”

“Yes, Ben. On his heart. There’s nothing routine about that.”

* * *

Later that night, Ben is seated on a bench with his back to a window in the hospital cafeteria, one leg stretched out, the other bent up, a piece of paper pressed against it as he writes. 

> _ Rey,  _
> 
> _ I know we haven’t talked in a while. I’m sorry if I upset you—I didn’t mean to. I hope you understand why I couldn’t say anything that day.  _
> 
> _ I need to talk to someone right now, and you’re the only one I think might understand. Something’s happened, and I just…I don’t know what to think of it all. There’s so much unknown. So much about the past that I wish I could change, about the future that I wish I could know. My mentor always reminds me that we have to let the past go in order to move forward. I’m starting to rethink that now.  _

Rey’s heart breaks as she reads the letter. It’s raining outside. Wind and water and branches from the tree below her window strike the glass. Her back is pressed against it and the cool touch is comforting as her heart flares blush across her cheeks. She feels foolish for having let so much time pass without speaking to him. And for what? A point? 

_ Point made, jackass,  _ she tells herself. 

> _ I want to tell you about my father, if that’s okay. I don’t talk about him much, but I’m afraid if I don’t now, maybe I never will. Maybe it’ll be too late.  _
> 
> _ He’s the reason I became an architect. You know his work, actually. I think you’re quite fond of it. He built the lake house for my mother. Sold it, years later, when it was completed. We had a little bit of a falling out, all of us. I chose not to follow in the family line, his line at least. Went to work for a partner of my grandfather. My mom didn’t care for that; he made a lot of regrettable choices in life, and I guess she was worried I might turn out to do the same.  _
> 
> _ I think she was right, though I don’t think I’m ready to admit that to her.  _
> 
> _ I guess Dad was trying to slam the door shut on that chapter of our lives. Selling the lake house, moving into the city, it allowed him to forget about it all. I quit school, Mom threw herself into work. It didn’t take long for us to stop talking all together.  _

At the hospital, Ben takes a cup of coffee from a woman behind a kiosk and makes his way back upstairs to the room where his father ought to be sleeping, but is likely still up, readers on, stack of plans in his lap for grading. 

That’s the exact scene Ben finds when he reaches the door. 

“It’s late,” he says, walking past the foot of the bed to where Han is propped up on a stack of pillows. “You know, I’m not supposed to do this. I had to sneak it past three nurses on my way back.” 

Ben hands Han the coffee and the older man’s hand shakes a bit as he takes it from his son. 

> _ Life is a lot longer than it seems like it is, when you’re living day to day.  _
> 
> _ It’s easy to let yourself get caught up in all the things that didn’t go the way you wanted them to. To sit around waiting for something magical to happen instead of going out and making that magic for yourself. I wasted a lot of time being angry, Rey. I know that isn’t the side of me I’ve let you see, but trust me. He’s there. I’m Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Frankenstein’s Monster. Maybe it’s best you don’t know me now or in the past. Maybe we should keep it that way. I’m starting to think you were right for stopping your letters.  _

“Is this decaf?” Han asks. 

“You don’t need caffeine, Dad. You had a  _ heart attack _ .”

“Is it decaf?”

Ben sighs and crosses the room, throwing himself into the chair under the windows. 

“No, it’s not.”

Han brings the cup to his lips and takes a sip. What might be considered a smile in some circles almost hints across his lips. He swallows it down with the coffee. He goes back to reading for a few minutes, Ben sitting in the silence, staring out the windows. After a while, Han takes off his glasses and drops them to his lap.

“I don’t need you,” he says. It stings Ben, as it was intended. 

“Well, I’m going to stay until you go to sleep.”

Han scoffs. “Not gonna happen, kid.”

“There’s no point in driving all the way back home tonight. I’m staying. You don’t have to talk to me.” He eyes a stack of magazines on the bedside table. “Do you mind?”

“Knock yourself out.” There is a beat. Han puts his glasses back on, picks up a piece of paper. Out of the corner of his eye, he glances at Ben, then mumbles, “If that sort of thing still interests you.”

> _ I’ve made my share of small stupid mistakes in life, but I think the greatest was giving up on what I had.  _
> 
> _ I think he’d die if he heard me telling anyone this, but there’s this memory I have of him. Each night as he put me to sleep, he’d sit at the end of my bed, hand on my back. I know he thought I was asleep, but I never was. I don’t think I could even think about falling asleep until he’d said it.  _
> 
> _ He used to tell me I was his greatest creation.  _
> 
> _ I should have stayed in school. I should have followed in his footsteps. Everyone told me I had a talent for it, just like my father. But I felt lost in his shadow.  _
> 
> _ I think the real problem is that…I should have stopped looking at it as a shadow and recognized it as a reflection. I was great because of him, not despite him. In the end, I felt like someone had to surrender, so that’s what I did. I quit. I moved away. I threw myself into something I knew he’d hate.  _
> 
> _ In the end, I don’t think either of us has been all that happy for it.  _

When Ben wakes in the morning, there’s a terrible stiffness to his neck. He tilts it this way and that, trying to get it to pop. Han is already awake, watching him. 

Ben pushes himself up and out of the chair. 

“Coffee?” he asks, deep voice catching with sleep. 

“No, no coffee,” Han says quietly. He stares at Ben a moment more then pulls his gaze away and picks up his glasses, putting them on and returning to his pages. “Sit down, Ben. You’re not going anywhere.”

Ben doesn’t hear him correctly the first time. He’s sure that Han’s just gave him a direction to exit, but the words actually fall on his ears and he stops, shifting a little near the door. 

“I was just going to get cleaned up,” he says. “I’ll be back.”

“Mmm,” Han mutters from behind a page. He makes a mark across it with a red pen and then looks over the top at Ben. “Hurry up, then.”

> _ I’m sharing things with you I’ve never shared with anyone before. You wanted to know me? Here I am. I guess I really thought things might be different after that. That we’d pick up where we left off. I could finish studying under him. We could go into business together like we always talked about. Solo and Son.  _

There are a few smudges, a few lines crossed out. It appears as if he’s thought to say something and changed his mind. 

_ Well, _ he writes finally, a heaviness to him Rey hasn’t seen before. 

She’s reading the letter again, in the elevator, the numbers over head ticking down, down, down, drawing her closer to the documents room. 

> _ I seem to have poured my little heart out here. Sorry about that. Thanks for listening.  _

When the elevator stops and the doors open, she folds the letter back and places it in the pocket of her coat then steps out. It’s colder down in the basement than it is in the rest of the hospital. It sends a chill up her spine.

Before she even walks into the records room, Rey knows what she’ll find. 

There’s a part of her that needs to see it for herself, and another part of her that needs to see it for Ben. 

She finds the cabinet that’s labeled  _ R-S _ and next to it  _ S-T _ . She looks through the bottom half of one and the top half of the other before she finds it. 

_ Solo, Han _

The file should feel heavier. There is the weight of an entire life, summarized between a fold of paper. It’s like a feather though. Could be there one moment and gone the next.

When she lets the folder fall open, she comes face to face with a death certificate. It’s signed by an attending surgeon she’s met before but never worked with,  _ Ana Klycznski.  _ Rey flicks her eyes over the rest of the document and the others behind it, stapled to the back. 

_ Time of Death, 11:52AM _

Her eyes drift to her watch. It makes her stomach turn to know that this will occur in three hours, almost to the dot. She thinks of Ben, tries to imagine what he’s doing in this moment, two years ago today. She hopes he’s at the hospital with Han. But there’s a chance…

There is a family history section and one for personal information behind the certificate. 

She finds Ben’s name quickly, traces her hand over it then brings her fingers to her mouth where they meet a few tears that have escaped past the bridge of her nose. 

She’s about to put the file back when another name catches her attention. It sits beside the printed word  _ Spouse _ and comes again further down under  _ Emergency Contact _ . 

Rey falls against the filing cabinet, sinking to the floor, the open file in her lap when she lands and Leia’s name staring up at her from within. 


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're entering rough waters, y'all...

Rey pushes open the doors to Wing B and rushes over too Kaydel at the front desk. 

“Kay,” she says in a hurry, a little out of breath. She throws both hands on the desk, catching herself. “Where’s Wexley?”

“He was going to eat and leave .I think he’s in the break room, or maybe the cafeteria.” She stands up and leans over the desk as Rey begins to run down the hall in search of Snap. “Rey, what’s wrong?” Kaydel calls after her. 

“I’ll tell you some other time, Connix!”

Rey busts through the door to the break room and comes face to face with Snap Wexley, a slice of pizza held up to his face. 

“Snap,” she says, holding onto the door for dear life. “I need you to take my shift.”

“What?” He lowers the pizza, the thinnest corner of it sagging down toward the plate. 

“Come on, it’s an emergency and you owe me, I need you to take my shift.” 

“Okay, okay,” he says in a hurry. He stands and looks around the room in a nervous panic now. “Do I—is there something going on out on the floor?”

“No,” Rey says, shaking her head. “No, finish your lunch. Clock in with Kay when you’re done.“ She turns to leave and stops mid-step, turning back to face him again. “Thank you,” she whispers. 

Frantic, she drives to the lake house faster than seems physically possible. 

“If there was ever a need for the DeLorean,” she says to herself as she taps the steering wheel anxiously. 

The tires skid out beneath the car when she turns down the gravel road and when she puts the car in park, she practically throws herself out of the car, rushing to the mailbox. 

She scribbles on a piece of paper and slams it inside the mailbox. 

Then, she waits.

Ben is walking down the jetty, a fresh pair of clothes on. He checks the watch on his wrist. It only took him an hour to drive here from the hospital, not too bad. It’ll be about an hour back if he doesn’t hit traffic. He should make it in time for the surgery. 

Rey is clinging to the mailbox, urging Ben to be there. She flips the flag up, flips it down. Waits a moment, flips it up and flips it back down again—anything to signal to him that there’s something waiting for him. 

He misses it though. 

Ben loads himself into the truck and drives off down the road away from the house on the lake. 

When Rey opens the mailbox again, her letter is still inside.

“Fuck,” she says, tears catching in her throat. “Fuck, Ben.”

Ben’s sitting in traffic, eyes flicking to the clock and back to the scene in front of him when his cell phone rings. His eyes glance down to the seat beside him and it’s his mother’s name that flashes across the screen. It sends his heart plummeting. 

“Hello?”

“Ben, honey. Where are you?”

“Stuck in traffic, on my way back to the hospital. Has dad gone into surgery yet?”

“Honey, I’m afraid—oh, sweetheart.”

A few minutes later, Ben end the call and drops the phone. It falls to the floor of the truck and he doesn’t reach to pick it up. 

He doesn’t drive to the hospital. 

Instead, he takes the next exit, turns around, and drives back to the lake house to finish packing the boxes that didn’t make it in the U-Haul. 

The flag is up when he returns. He takes the letter and folds it, putting it in his back pocket. 

There is another letter in the mailbox when he wakes the next day, truck loaded with boxes, ready for whatever comes next.

Ben takes the letter and places it with the other, inside his wallet. He doesn’t read them for a few days, but when he does, it’s with a weight that even time may not quite be able to heal. 

> _ Ben—I’m so sorry. I had to at least try to warn you. I would have liked to reach you in time, I thought maybe we could change what happened.  _
> 
> _ I guess I was wrong. Maybe these things can’t be changed.  _
> 
> _ The shock feels fresh to me, even though it was years ago. I suppose it’s still fresh to you, too. Know I’m there, mourning with you. I’m sorry it took me so long to write you back. You’re right, I was angry. But not with you. Just with…the way things are. It’s so unfair, that we should find each other like this and not have the means to do anything about it without the risk of…messing it all up. Life’s a delicate balance like that, I guess.  _

Ben folds the letter and puts it in the breast pocket of his jacket as Poe approaches from the front of the room where there’s an open casket. 

“Hey.”

“Thanks for being here today.” 

“Of course.” 

> _ I used to spend a lot of time thinking about life and death. They’re two sides of the same coin, interdependent, one existing only because of the other.  _
> 
> _ Last February, I was at the park and something happened that I couldn’t shake for a long time. God, it was Valentine’s Day, which somehow makes it so much worse. I won’t bore you with the details. It takes a strong stomach, and to be quite honest, I don’t know that I want to relive it. I’ve only just gotten past having nightmares. Anyway. Afterwards, a friend told me to go somewhere that made me feel most like myself. Somewhere that allowed me to forget about the heartache that comes with living in the world we do.  _

Poe stands beside Ben as they both look out over the crowd of people who have gathered in Han’s memory. “Leia says it’s time, when you’re ready.”

Ben lowers his head, studying the floor below his feet, then without a word, he stands and puts a hand on Poe’s shoulder. 

“You’ll get the other side?”

“Of course,” Poe says. 

Together they walk to the front of the room where the casket is closed and the pallbearers stand in position on either side of the enclosed bed, Poe at one side of Han’s head, Ben at the other. 

> _ So I did…and that’s when I found your letter.  _
> 
> _ I know it’s probably the last place you want to be, but…the lake house is a place we both love, it’s a place your father built. I hope you can find some solace there. If not right away, maybe in the future. Maybe one day we can find our solace there, together.  _


	13. Chapter 13

> _ Rey, I want to meet you, for real this time. In your year, not mine. Pick a time and a place, tell me when and I’ll be there.  _

> _ Tomorrow. Except…it’s not that easy, is it? It’s tomorrow for me, but that’s two years for you.  _

> _ I don’t care if I have to wait ten years. Ten years waiting for you is ten years well spent. I’ll wait an entire lifetime if that’s what it takes.  _

> _ What will you do all that time, while you’re waiting? Won’t it get lonely? _

> _ No, I’ll be thinking of you. I’ll work out every day so that I can stay in shape, and at night, before I go to sleep, I’ll pray I don’t lose my hair. I’m not sure balding would suit me. I guess only time will tell.  _

> _ I’m sure you look good no matter what. It’s unfair, don’t you think? That you’ve seen me and I haven’t ever seen you before?  _

> _ I guess that’s true. I hadn’t thought of that. Would you like me to give you a play-by-play or do you want to leave that as a surprise.  _

> _ Surprise me. Are you sure you don’t mind the wait?  _

> _ I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life. I’ve lost too much time already. I don’t want to lose another second.  _

> _ All right, then. Tomorrow.  _

> _ Okay then. See you in two years, Rey.  _

* * *

A hostess with long dark hair stretching well past her shoulders stands behind a desk as she flips through reservation book. Ben stands across from her, a waiting expression. She looks at him, flustered, and asks for the third time if he’d like anything to drink. 

“It’s on the house,” she says. “Beer? Wine?”

“No thank you,” he says easily. “Just the reservation.” 

“Well, we’ve just received our fourth star, so I’m sorry, it might be a little hard to get you in. It’s possible I could squeeze you in somewhere…is it for yourself and a…girlfriend? Wife?” She looks as if she may faint at the thought of this man before her being off the market. 

“I don’t  _ think _ you’ll have a problem finding a table for me,” he offers. “I need something two years from tomorrow.”

She stops flipping through the pages and leans her head forward, a gut reaction. 

“I’m sorry, two years?”

“Yes, ma’am. September 15, 2019.”

“Oh—okay,” she takes up her pen and flips the book as far as it will go, looking relieved when she does indeed have a date that far in advance. “It’s your lucky day. That evening is open. I’ll set you up with our best table, Mr…?”

“Solo, Ben Solo.”

“Mr. Solo. We look forward to your visit with us.” 

* * *

Two years to that date, Rey completes her rounds, a slim black dress hanging in wait for her in the locker with her name across the front. She can’t help the flick of her wrist as she slides her paperwork into their respective mailboxes behind the front desk, and Kaydel can’t help but take notice. 

She’s leaning back in her chair, the hallway empty of people and the phones abnormally quiet. 

“You’ve got a date tonight, don’t you,” she says, eyeing Rey carefully. Rey turns around and gives her a puzzled expression. 

“What makes you say that?”

“Look at you,” she motions up and down. “You’re bouncing off the walls.” 

Before Rey has the chance to answer or offer any kind of retort, Leia comes walking briskly down the hall. 

“Thank God,” she says, reaching out for Rey. “We never got daily bloods from the floor.”

Rey looks stricken. “The interns were supposed to—”

“I don’t know,” Leia shakes her head. “The interns must have screwed up. They didn’t collect any samples. Listen, if we split the list.”

“But I—” 

Kaydel raises her eyebrows and Rey narrows her. 

“Okay,” she says in a rush, grabbing her clipboard off the countertop and rushing off behind Leia. 

An hour later than when she was supposed to leave, she’s in her black dress and rushing down the city street. She glances at her watch. 

“Fuck. Come on.”

It seems fitting, somehow, that after all of this, after Ben waiting two whole years, she should be running late. 

“Please, wait, just a little longer,” she begs. 

She still smells a little like hospital, but the fresh air is doing a good job of airing her out. It doesn’t completely make up for a shower she didn’t get to take, but it’s good enough. She walks through the door of Sotto’s and comes face to face with the same hostess Hux was shot down by when he tried to take her out a few months prior. 

Her cheeks tinge at the memory, and it feels somehow full circle to be here now, meeting Ben. 

Rey feels small under the woman’s stare, but gives her an amicable smile all the same. 

“May I help you?”

“Hi, yes. I have a reservation. It’s Niima—or, wait, no. Solo? I’m not sure, it could be under either name.”

The hostess looks down at the page before her and the second her roaming finger hits a certain line, her whole face lights up.

“Oh, yes! We’ve been expecting you. You’re the—” she shakes her head and hides her smile. “Pardon my forthrightness. Follow me.”

Rey gives her coat to the man at the entrance and follows the woman back toward a small, circular nape in the corner. The restaurant is cast in a dark, hazy shadow that emits a kind of romance Rey has only ever dreamt of or read about through books. The hostess places two menus at the table and holds out the chair for Rey.

It takes her a moment to place what doesn’t feel right. 

She looks at her watch again, on the underside of her wrist. She’s over an hour late, and Ben isn’t there. 

“Was—I’m sorry,” Rey says, catching the woman before she has the chance to leave. “Was Mr. Solo by chance here earlier? Did he step out?”

“No, ma’am,” she says. She seems to think for a moment, then takes the chance and steps a little closer, excitement in her eyes. “We were actually afraid you might be a no-show. This reservation is a bit of a legend around here. It was made  _ two years _ in advance; been here longer than most of the staff. We book far out, but that’s kind of unheard of.”

Rey sits on this for a minute but doesn’t have the chance to comment before the hostess goes on. 

“I hope you don’t mind my asking, and forgive me if you do, but…there’s been a bit of speculation, you know, over  _ why _ it was made. Some of the crew have a few bets going…”

Rey pulls her attention away from the young woman and looks around the room, searching every face, every head, for any kind of recognition. As she does, she sees heads popping out from around the front of the building, from the kitchen—busboys, waiters, kitchen staff. 

The hostess takes note of the panic evident in Rey’s eyes and clears her throat. 

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I’ll have your waiter get you a water and take your drink order.”

The second she moves from the table, a waiter comes to Rey’s side and holds out a bottle of champagne. 

“Complimentary,” he says, pouring her a glass. 

“Thank you.” 

“Good luck,” he says, then places the bottle in the ice bucket beside the table and retreats back into the kitchen. 

* * *

Rey stays until the staff is sweeping the floor, turning chairs over tables, dimming lights until they’re all the way out. 

The same, sorry waiter who has been tending to her all night comes over once more and asks if she’d like anything to go. Rey looks up to meet his eyes and gives him a watery smile. 

“No, thank you.” She unwringing her hands from the cloth napkin which has been in her lap for hours at this point and places it on the table. “I’ll be going. Here—” she opens her pocketbook and pulls out a hundred dollar bill. “For all your time.” She stands and casts one last glance around the room. Everyone is sharing in her own disappointment. Two years of waiting, for this. A lonely woman at a table, stood up. Forgotten. Left to her own devices. 

“I’m sorry to have disappointed you,” she says to the onlooking crew as she rushes out the door, only barely remembering to grab her coat on the way out. 

As she walks home, she can’t help but feel that something isn’t right. 

> _ You weren’t there.  _

> _ That can’t be. That’s not right. Something must have happened, I wouldn’t—Rey, I would never do that to you. I’ll make it up to you, I promise. I’ll try to fix it.  _
> 
> _ I’m so sorry. _

> _ No, Ben. You don’t understand, it’s too late. It’s already happened. I went to the restaurant and you weren’t there. I sat at that table by myself for hours. I bought a new dress, I looked…You should have seen the way they were looking at me. I made a complete spectacle of myself.  _
> 
> _ It’s not your fault. It’s mine.  _
> 
> _ I was forgetting how much a person’s life can change in two years. It wasn’t right to hold you to that kind of expectation—to wait around for two whole years—who knows what else has happened in your life between now and then. Maybe you met someone.  _

> _ There’s no way. I can wait for you, Rey. I know I can. I’ve waited this long already, haven’t I? I know I wouldn’t just…forget.  _

> _ Don’t you see, Ben? It’s okay if you did. Maybe wherever you are now, you’re living a full, happy life. Maybe you got so wrapped up in the now that the days passed and you won’t even realize until a month from now. And if that’s the case, I’m glad. Because that means you’re making the most of it.  _
> 
> _ I’m sad now. More than sad. This feels like…the end of something.  _
> 
> _ But I can be happy, eventually, if I know that you’re out there somewhere accomplishing great things, so caught up in enjoying life that you don’t even know the date.  _

Ben broods over the letter. 

Bazine is at the front desk, and he can see her picking her teeth in the reflection of the black computer monitor across from her. There’s a pane of glass that separates his office from the lobby, and she catches his reflection behind her. He darts his eyes down. 

She gives him a sorry look, gets up, and comes to lean in the doorway. 

“What’s the matter, boss?”

Poe is passing in the hall when she says it and it catches his attention. 

“Something wrong?” He pops in, filling the only remaining sliver of space in the doorway. 

“Nothing’s wrong,” Ben says. “Shut the door on your way out?”

He pulls out a piece of paper and lets the pen in his hand form a huge ink blot before he finally commits his thoughts to the page. 

> _ Are you saying I should move on with my life, then?  _

Rey sits down next to Leia in the cafeteria and on the bottom of Ben’s letter, she adds her own line. 

> _ I’m saying…I think we both should.  _

She doesn’t bother folding the letter up as she digs a fork into her salad. Leia looks up briefly then down at the piece of paper between them. 

“Still writing, huh?”

“Something like that,” Rey says. “Maybe not for much longer.”

“Mmm.” Leia takes a drink of water but doesn’t move her eyes from the page. Rey catches her staring out of the corner of her eye. When she’s had a few more bits of her lunch, had a chance to clear her own throat, and Leia has still not removed her eyes, nor offered something of more value to the conversation, Rey sits down her fork. 

“He never told me which hospital you worked in,” she says after a second of tossing the words around in her mouth. 

“I’m sorry?” Leia says, tearing her eyes away. 

Rey gives one more beat before taking another route down the same path. 

“I’m sorry you lost your husband, and your son.” 

“Well, those we love are never truly gone, now are they?”

It seems to be somewhat of an uncomfortable conversation for her, and though Rey is irritated, her plight is not with Leia, but with Ben. With the universe and this cruel play they’ve been cast in. Leia goes back to eating and excuses herself a moment later, one more languid glance toward the page on the table. 

“He really has beautiful handwriting,” she says quietly, running her fingers over the page. “You’re sure you want to give up on him?”

Rey looks up at her, tears brimming in her eyes. Leia places a hand on her shoulder and gives it a tight squeeze. 

“You never really give up on the ones you love.”

* * *

When Ben reads the letter outside the mailbox, the  _ line _ really, though in her defense that was all he’d offered her, he feels like the wind’s been knocked out of him. In his haste to write something back, he spills the contents of his messenger bag all over the ground. Cursing, he picks up a pen and scrawls across the page. 

> _ Rey, please don’t do this. Don’t go this way. _

He shoves the page in the mailbox and wills her to be on the other end. Flipping the flag, he holds on to either side. 

After a minute or two of waiting, he opens it.

The same page is inside. Their three lines are the only thing written in the white space. 

He moves the flag, checks again. Moves the flag back. 

* * *

Weeks pass and Ben adds letter after letter to the box. They remain there. 


	14. Chapter 14

Kaydel Connix rolls into the taxi and Rey holds a hand at her back, pushing her forward, albeit gently. 

“She’s had way too much to drink, Wexley.” 

“Oooh, it smells so good in here. Like fried Twinkies and Churros. Let’s get food.”

“We need to get her home,” Rey warns. “You know what comes next, don’t you?”

“The puking,” Kay answers for them. 

“Right,” Rey mutters. “Try not to throw up all over us, okay, sweetie?”

She’s about to dip into the taxi beside Kaydel when someone calls her name from the sidewalk behind her. 

“Rey?”

She hesitates, half in and half out of the car, looks behind her. 

“Tig?”

“Hey,” he says, stepping off the sidewalk and coming closer. He holds the door open for her and peeks inside. Kaydel gives him a bright smile right before her eyes droop and she leans into Wexley’s side. “What are the odds, in a city as big as this?”

“Truly,” Rey says, hesitating. “What are the odds?”

“I promise,” Hux marks an ex across his chest. “No ambush.”

This brings a real smile to Rey’s face, and she has to bite her cheek to hold it back. 

“I’m going out on a real limb here, but…Do you want to grab a slice of pizza?”

Rey really hesitates. She looks down to Kaydel and Wexley, and on her way between their faces and Hux’s she catches the driver’s. 

“Come on, lady, make a decision,” he growls. “I don’t have all night. The meter’s running.”

“Go on,” Wexley says. “I’ll get her home.”

Rey narrows her eyes. 

“Call me when she’s in and call me if she wakes up sick.”

“We both work at a hospital, Rey. I can take care of her too.” 

“I know you can.” She leans away from the door and shuts it, then says through the window. “I’ll check in on things in the morning.”

When the taxi pulls away, a sinking feeling makes Rey wonder if she’s made the wrong call. 

Despite her anxiety, the night is not as painful as she would have expected. They pick up their conversation easily enough and after a while, Rey finds herself laughing, having a good time. It feels like a betrayal, but at the same time, it feels good—to have someone there, in front of her,  _ with _ her. Someone who will meet her at a restaurant for a date, who won’t leave her alone because they had to wait two years for the day to come. 

It’s not a fair thought to have, but that doesn’t stop it from coming to mind. 

When he walks her to the door of her building later that night, she can tell he’s lingering. 

He’s shaved, no more beard. It’s not the first time that night that she’s noticed. 

“I’m really glad I ran into you tonight,” he says. 

“Yeah, it was nice. See how well it can go if you don’t trap someone into an outing?”

The joke lands and doesn’t disturb this steady thing they have which is a relief to Rey. Hux seems to be relieved as well that the evening is coming to a positive conclusion. 

“Thank you,” Rey says when there’s a lull. “For the pizza, and a nice night.” 

“Nice night, huh?”

She pulls her lips together and gives him a sorry look. The tree overhead rustles and it sends a beautiful pang through her heart. 

He steps closer and puts a hand at her arm. A step closer. 

Rey’s breath constricts and her heart starts to beat too quickly. It’s suffocating, in all the worst ways possible. The closer he gets, the harder a time she has getting oxygen into her lungs. Before he has the chance to close the distance between them, she holds out her hand, stopping him. 

In this moment, with the tree dancing above them, and the stars blinking out across the city, she remembers another night, another kiss. One she’d almost forgotten. 

She remembers the way it enveloped her, the way her lips pulled to his like a magnet through water. Every kiss should feel that powerful. 

She thinks of Ben—of the face she’s fought to find. His strong brow, his dark hair. The sorrowful way his lips pout. He’s just this side of heaven, and it feels like a knife to the gut to imagine ever kissing anyone who isn’t him ever again. Even if she can’t unwrite the past the way she’d like. 

The future is what it is because the past remains written. 

“I can’t,” she says, shaking her head. 

Hux relents—retreats. He lets his hand fall to his side and shakes his head. 

“Don’t worry about it.”

A small piece of her is sorry to have lead him into thinking this night could have ended any other way. In a moment of present thinking, she’d allowed herself to act in the now. It had proven to exist as empty as it always had, though. 

A realization dawns over her, that it’s not too late to have the things she’s always wanted. 

A home. 

A husband. 

A family.

A future. 

The only thing keeping her from it is that, now, …maybe always…none of it matters if she can’t have it with Ben. 

* * *

Being the stubborn person he is, Ben continues to make the drive to the lake house and check the mail. It’s more difficult now, though, because Rey and Hux will move in soon. And he knows, the way he knows so many things of Rey’s life in this present, Hux will move out and she will live there alone. 

He has to plan his trips carefully. 

He makes a point to check in with Finn and Rose, who maintain the store beautifully. He asks after the tenant at the lake house, and he holds a certain sense of pride when he hears she seems to be doing well. It warms his hear to hear that a friendship has formed between the couple and Rey. It settles Ben’s anxious heart, knowing she will not be completely alone. 

Of course, it does not surprise him when he doesn’t find any new letters in the mailbox. In many ways, it is what he expected after their last encounter. 

* * *

When the first snow falls, Ben takes Eight up to the lake to play in the drifts. 

They stay far enough from the house that he won’t be easily spotted, but close enough that he feels like they’re there together. 

Ben makes snowballs and tosses them into the air. Eight leaps and catches them, reveling in the way it breaks as her jaw bites down. 

At one point, Ben walks along the shore, shooing Eight away from the ice-covered lake. The dog scampers up ahead, not looking back. 

“Wait up,” Ben calls after her.

If it’s possible, she takes off faster. 

“Not this again,” he says, picking up his pace until he’s running at a light jog. Eight darts up over a hill and when he crests behind her, she’s gone. 

“Eight!” he calls into the distance. 

Both his hands are positioned at his hips and he careens his head, searching through the billowing white snow for any sign of the little white and orange corgi. He walks around the property for a time, until he comes closer to the lake house than he’s dared go in weeks. 

He’s far enough to be hidden by distance, but not so far that he can’t see in the windows. 

There, on the other side, Eight is trotting around, weaving between Rey’s feet as she walks. 

It strikes him then, that this is the moment he’s been waiting for. This is the merging of their two stories, the marriage of their timelines for good. 

She’s even more beautiful than he remembered. The winter weather, big sweaters and warm scarves suit her well. He wants nothing more than to walk through that door and into her life and never turn around. 

But to do so now would be to unwrite everything that happened before. Every letter that’s stowed away in the shoebox of that attic would cease to exist, and with it would go everything they’ve become in the span of the year. 

Ben understands in this moment that he has to leave. There’s no other way than to let her go and wait for her to come back to him— for their timing to be right. Whatever happens next, that’s the future they’ve written for themselves and that’s the future he wants.


	15. Chapter 15

Eventually, Ben goes back to school. 

It’s not the same without Han there to smack the back of his head when he makes a stupid mistake, but it feels good, doing something for himself—doing something for Han. He calls Leia, too. They talk a few times a week and have dinner on Sundays. It’s far from perfect, but it’s better than what it had been. 

There’s one day in particular when Ben is walking down a street on his way to a meeting and he passes a FOR SALE sign in the window of a particularly classic looking brownstone. It make him stop and the longer he looks at it, the more taken he is. An idea strikes him, and he pulls from his billfold a business card he’s only used once before. 

He shoots Poe a text before he dials the number on the card. 

_ Cancel your meetings for the next three hours and meet me here.  _

He drops his location and then switches over to the keypad, entering the seven digits as quickly as he can. 

“Hello?”

“Hey, Armitage, it’s Ben Solo.”

“Oh, hi.” His voice is expectedly distant. All things considered. Ben knows where he must be now, not with Rey at the lake house, not with Rey at all. A spark of pride swells somewhere inside his chest, but he does what he can to squash it down for the time being. 

“Thanks for picking up my call, I know things got off to a rocky start with us—”

“All water under the bridge,” he says. “What can I do for you?”

“I was wondering if you could tell me a little about a property on Racine Street?” 

A ping comes through on the phone and Ben pulls it away from his ear, switching to speaker, and pulls up the text conversation with Poe. 

_ What is this? Don’t murder me now, after all this time, bro. _

Ben lets out a huff of air.  _ I’m not going to murder you, idiot. Get here. It’s about our future as partners.  _

The dots appear below the text he’s sent and Ben sees his fatal flaw before Poe can type a response witty enough to send. 

* _ business partners _ , he adds. 

Hux asks for the address and tells him that he’s in the area, can be there before noon.

_ Noted _ , Poe sends. He adds a smiley face sandwiched between two hearts for good measure. 

* * *

As is to be expected, Rey throws herself into her work. 

She’s reminded of what Ben said about Leia and the irony is not lost on her. In fact, it stares her in the face every day. 

On Sundays, she goes to Leia’s for dinner. 

“My son used to do this with me,” she confides one night. 

Rey roams through the living room with a glass of wine in her hand as Leia moves dishes from the kitchen to the dining room—she refuses to let Rey help, which took time getting used to. There are pictures of Ben everywhere and it kills her. The images of him in high school are not her favorite, but they come close. He has ears the size of saucers which it appears he later learns to hide under shoulder length hair. It suits him, both the hair and the ears. 

As much as she wants to, she doesn’t talk about Ben. 

Leia doesn’t either, which only makes Rey more curious, but she doesn’t press. 

There’s something in her heart reminding her that this has to happen however it happens. They tried to coordinate a plan for the future and it didn’t turn out. She’s done orchestrating her own life. Everyone always talks about how hard it is to ride passenger, but driving—that’s so much worse. There’s a peace that comes with sitting back and letting the things that move around you settle in. You miss things when you forget to take the time to look out the window. 

Sometimes, she thinks Leia knows that her son and the person who broke Rey’s heart are one and the same. 

* * *

She tries to do a better job of staying connected, something Leia says gets harder the older you get. 

She invites Finn and Rose to come into the city for dinner. They bring Paige who is so big, Rey hardly recognizes her. 

Rey makes a habit of cleaning out her closet once a month—excessive, maybe, but it’s a good use of her time and an even better distraction. Every time, she pulls out the dress she wore to Sotto’s and puts it in a pile to take to a consignment. In the end, it winds up back in her closet, hanging on a hook along the back wall. 

* * *

Both of them get lost in their own continuities, overwhelmingly struck by loneliness, hardened to what might be right under their noses and blinded by the possibility of what might one day be. 

* * *

Rey is on the phone with Rose, detailing a place she’s thinking of getting along the waterfront as she makes her way through the park with Eight. 

“It needs something off the back, like a porch or an extended patio, a sunroom, something. It ends too abruptly,” she says. 

“Oh, a solarium. That would be gorgeous. Who are you getting to do the work?”

“Well, it only matters if my offer gets accepted,” she reasons. Rose gives a sound of agreement. “The company is called Renaissance. Tig told me he knows the guy who opened it, says they might cut me a deal.”

“Well that’d be nice.” Rose says something just out of range of the receiver but it sounds like it’s directed to Paige, so Rey doesn’t press for her to repeat it. When she comes back in full volume, there’s a different tone to her voice. “Do you see much of him these days? I know you’ve been on again, off again over the past few years.”

“No,” she says to Rose. “We run into each other every now and then, but we’re well past that. No chance of rekindling that fire.” 

“I think that’s good,” Rose says. It catches Rey off guard. 

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, I always thought you’d be better with someone who was more of a…dreamer I guess. Hux was too wound up.” 

Rey chuckles into the receiver. “You’re not wrong,” she says lightly. 

* * *

There’s only one light on in the whole office when Poe finally creeps out of his studio to head home for the evening. Ben’s hunched over his drafting board, one hand lazily making fine details, finishing touches across the page. Poe come up behind him and takes it in. 

“It’s the lake house,” he says after a moment. “But, reimagined.”

Ben leans back, his long legs stretched out before him. The chair groans under his size. 

“It’s romantic,” Poe adds. “The colors are softer outside, that muted green that made it look rustier than it was is gone and you’ve replaced it with this cream—that’ll look amazing when the sun hits it in the evening.” 

He quiets for a moment, both of them reveling in the image on the page. There’s a porch and a stairway leading off the back, down into the water. The other house was a place you’d go to be alone. This, this is a place you’d take someone. It steals Poe’s breath away and reaffirms that they’re making the right call in opening this business. 

“Who is she?” Poe asks after some time. 

Ben draws in a long and shaky breath. 

A beat passes between them. 

“Rey,” he says quietly. He stands and pushes in the chair, then reaches out for the light and flicks it, casting the room into darkness. “Her name was Rey.” 


	16. Chapter 16

Rey can see the building up ahead, a quiet little brownstone. There’s something about the way Renaissance has filled the front windows with little models of all the things they can build for you while working out of a building so…classic, so mundane. It draws Rey to them in a way she hadn’t expected.

Months have passed since she first spoke with Rose about restoring the flat she bought. 

Her phone buzzes and she takes it out of her pocket. There, on the screen, is a picture of Paige, big smile peeking out over the top of a Valentine Rey had sent earlier in the week. 

_ Thanks, Auntie Rey!  _

She smiles and tucks the phone back into her pocket. 

* * *

“What’s the date?” Poe has one hand pressed against the ATM and he’s half turned to look at Ben, half focused on the screen where he ought to be punching in his PIN. 

“Valentine’s Day,” Ben answers. “February 14, 2019.” He shakes his head. “Someone’s not going to be happy if they find out you forgot it was Valentine’s Day.”

Poe shoots him the finger over his shoulder and punches in the keys, grabs his money and his card, and jogs over to where Ben is waiting for him at the curb. They pick up an easy pace together. Poe stuffs his hands and the cash into his pockets. 

“I didn’t forget.” He looks to Ben and winks. “Just wanted an excuse to ask you if you had any sexy plans later tonight. Big, brooding, gorgeous guy like yourself must like to get his hair pulled now and then. So, let’s have it. Got a girl waiting on your bed when you get home?”

Ben shoots him a disgusted look and then casts his gaze around the street, desperate for anything to steer the conversation elsewhere. 

“That’s really—that’s something, you know.”

Poe winks. 

“Do you kiss your mother with that mouth?”

“I can do a lot of things with this mouth, Benny Boy. Things that would make your toes curl.”

“Okay, okay.”

They walk down the street, Poe somehow miraculously letting the conversation simmer to a slightly awkward buzz. The idea rolls around in Ben’s head, of having someone to go on a date with. It brings his mind back to Rey and the lake house. It’s been well over a year at this point, something that seems hard to believe. 

_ It feels like only yesterday, _ he thinks…

They come to a crosswalk and it occurs to him. 

It’s Valentine’s Day. 

“I could still meet her,” he blurts out. 

Poe’s attention snaps up. The crosswalk flicks over and people around them start carrying them across the street. 

“What year did I say it was?”

“2019—who are you talking about? I was kidding, I didn’t think you actually took the time to go out, good for you.” 

Ben shakes his head, and when they get to the other side of the street, he stops. 

“Rey,” he says again. The name seems to ring a bell somewhere in Poe’s mind. “She told me where she was today. In a letter.” This doesn’t help Poe but it’s all Ben needs. 

He’s waited years for these stars to align and this is where it’s brought him. No closer to her, no closer to happiness, no closer to anything. 

“I have to go do something,” Ben says, clapping Poe on the shoulder and turning on his heel. He looks both ways before crossing the street, just nearly missing a truck that comes careening down the street when the light is already turning red. Ben slams a hand on the hood of the car and the driver yells something out the window. 

He drives to the lake house faster than he ought to and prays no one else is home. 

He needs that box of letters. 

He need to know where she said she was—he needs to create his own happy ending. 

* * *

Rey walks through the door and a tall brunette smiles at her from behind the front desk. 

“Hello,” she says warmly. “Bazine Natel,” she sticks out her hand. “Nice to meet you. Can I help you with anything?”

Rey takes her hand kindly and gives it a light shake. 

“Rey Niima,” she says politely. “I have an appointment with the owners.” 

There’s a man standing in the back of the main room talking to a couple who are bent over a table flipping through a few design catalogs. He catches wind of what Rey’s said and looks her way, raising his hand. He has a warm face, salt and pepper hair, a little scruff. There’s something about his face that Rey instantly trusts. Leave it to Hux to know how to pick ‘em. 

“I’ll be right with you, Ms. Niima. Feel free to have a look around.”

She takes her time passing the various drawings that are scattered around the room. Some are on easels, some hung on the wall. One in particular is hanging under a small light along the back wall. She goes over and studies it. Something familiar about it makes her cock her head. 

“Isn’t it beautiful?” 

Rey turns and Poe is at her side, admiring the sketch alongside her. 

“It is,” she says. “It reminds me of a place I once lived.” 

It’s the lake house, that is for certain, but there’s something different about the relationship it has to the water and the earth below it. There’s a kinship in the way the water is lapping up toward the deck and the stairs that now stick off the back, drawing the inhabitants in for a swim. The tree is there in the middle, her favorite aspect of it, and the roof has been reconfigured so that it splits open and the tree can be one with the sky overhead. 

Instinctively, she reaches out to touch it, but pulls her hand away before she does. 

“Sorry,” she whispers. Her eyes drift to the bottom corner where there is a name. Poe catches the movement of her eyes and in the same second she reads the name of the artist, he speaks. 

“My best friend drew this; he’s the other half of Renaissance. His father, Han Solo—if you’ve heard of him—” 

“I have,” Rey says, too quiet. 

“He built the house for his wife. Ben redesigned it about a year after his father’s passing, dedicating this romanticized versions to a woman he was…well, you get the picture.” He gives Rey an apologetic look, sure she’s bored with his ramblings, then steps away from the picture, leaving her to stand nose-to-nose with it, alone. “I’m sure you’re ready to get on with your appointment. My office is right over here, if you’d like to step in.”

Rey glances at him, then around the room. There are other drawings, but none like this one. None with this tone. 

“You said Ben Solo,” she points to the drawing. “You mentioned he was the other half of Renaissance. Will he be joining us?”

Bazine comes up from behind them with two cups of coffee and catches Poe’s eye, shifting between him and Rey for a moment too long. Rey starts to sense that something is off about the exchange, or lack thereof. 

“I’m sorry, I must have missed something,” she says. 

“No, no, I’m sorry,” Poe says, taking the cups from Bazine and resting them on his desk. He motions for Rey to join him, but she doesn’t move. “He died,” Poe says finally. He forces his fingers onto his desk hand splayed open, grounding himself as he continues. “Two years ago today, actually.”

* * *

It hits Rey with a sinking feeling in her gut. 

Though physically, she knows she’s standing in the main room of the architecture firm, her body and her mind are far from the same place. 

She’s transported back to the park, two years ago to the tee. Where there should be concrete, there are poppies. Each of their stems bends in the wind that is not present, bowing until they are close enough to the earth they could kiss a stain into her skin. The wind finally does come, and when it does, Rey is whisked forward, her feet sliding just above ground. She’s sent forward with a jarring holt at the edge of the curb, and there, across from her is Ben. 

His head is bent in concentration, just like it was that day. 

She tries to scream, but there is a hand around her neck, a grip cutting off the oxygen which should be filling her lungs. No matter how hard she tries, she cannot warn him. 

With a jolt, she’s thrust out of the trance the second the bus makes contact with his body. 

She pinches her eyes closed and throws a hand over her mouth to muffle her scream during the second of time where she knows his body will make contact with the pavement. 

* * *

“That was Ben,” she says, breathless. 

Poe finally comes out from behind the desk and offers her a water or a chair to sit in. She waves him off and looks up to meet his eyes, a franticness in them. 

“How did it happen?” It’s a whisper.

Poe, bless him, appeases her. 

“He was struck by a bus, outside a park.” 

The tears rush forward before she can stop them and her ears muffle. 

Perhaps Poe or Bazine try to stop her as she runs from the building. Perhaps they are too stunned and confused and unsure of what’s happening to move after her and they simply let her go. 

All Rey knows is that she’s tearing down the street, holding her hand out for any cab that passes, desperate to get to the lake house as quickly as she can. 

Finally one pulls up next to her on the street. 

Rey throws herself in the back and gives the address, digging in her bag for anything to write with. 

* * *

The drive would be too long if she took a cab the whole way there. 

She has the driver spit her outside her car where she throws a wad of cash at him and rushes over to her little beat up sedan. 

Of all the trips she’s made there and back, this is the fastest she’s ever driven. She’s there and spilling out of the cabin of the car in no time. 

Desperately, she adds scribble after scribble onto a piece of paper and throws it into the mailbox, clinging to it as she flips the flag up and waits for something to happen. 

* * *

On the flipped side of a coin, Ben is carrying a shoebox of letters out of the lake house, one letter in particular in his hand. He gets in his truck and stows the shoebox in the seat beside him. 

The gravel kicks up dust around him as he pulls off toward the main road. He doesn’t know what it is, but something pulls his attention back. He glances up into the rearview mirror and catches the slightest bit of movement at the mailbox. 

The flag flips up. 

He stops his truck in its tracks. 


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know this was a bit of an update dump. I sort of forgot about it for a while, as life has been a bit crazy. You'll also notice the chapter count went down by three -- you're not losing story, I just miscounted ;) 
> 
> Hopefully you've enjoyed this Reylo take on a very special movie. I hope it can also provide a bit of relief during these troubling times of TROS. What a mess that was... 
> 
> Anyway. Enjoy this final chapter!

Kaydel has her head bent over her phone, a Twizzler sticking out of her mouth as she narrates what she’s typing. 

“I just don’t think we were meant to…” she stops and turns to face Rey. “Do you think it’s too much if I say we weren’t meant to be together, or should I just say I’m not interested?”

“Mmm,” Rey mutters, only half listening. “I don’t know if I believe in fate, but honesty usually works pretty well. You’re really breaking up with him on Valentine’s Day?”

Kaydel takes a bite out of the Twizzler and goes back to typing. 

“Yes,” she says simply. “I thought about sticking it out until tomorrow so I could at least have a nice dinner, get laid, you know—but I just can’t find it in me to go over to his apartment again and face that god-awful fish smell.” 

Leia was right, that she’s not so bad when she isn’t stressed. Of course, when she is, she’s a nightmare. It’s one of those rare days where they’re both off at the same time, and as neither of them has a date or any other, better plans to occupy their time, (well, Kaydel has the  _ option,  _ but seeing as she’s giving that up) they’re taking their time walking through Grant Park. 

“It’s such a beautiful day,” Rey says. “Unusually warm for late February.”

A fountain sits positioned in the center of the park. Little droplets spray off in every direction as the pool of water sucks up from the basin and is forced through the piping in strict, precise streams. Each droplet catches the sun in such a way that a prism of light dances across the concrete. 

“Let’s sit for a minute.”

They make their way over and sit along the edge. Rey drags her fingers through the water and mentally transplants herself to the shore of the lake. Even the birds have decided to come back early, flittering through the trees limbs like it’s already mid May and the start of spring, rather than winter’s hangover. 

Eventually, Kaydel tears herself away from her phone and they lean back, arms stretched out behind them, reveling in the small reprieve. 

A bird flies slightly too close, or perhaps it’s a butterfly nearly landing on her foot, or the woman throwing something away from off to her left—but something catches Rey’s attention and makes her open her eyes. She lifts her head languidly, still heavy from the warmth of the day, and her eyes fall on the mill of people at the base of a building across the street. 

* * *

Ben practically throws himself out of his truck. It’s parked a block too far and he races through crowds of people, across crosswalks, between cars. 

When he’s standing across from the fountain, he stops to catch his breath. The letter is heavy in his hand. It flickers in the warm breeze. His heart pinches and he gets a little lightheaded. 

> _ Ben, _
> 
> _ I know why you didn’t show up that night.  _

“It’s too warm out for late February, _ ”  _ someone says as they pass behind him. 

They’re right—it is. But it’s giving him a view he wouldn’t trade for the world.

Across from him, at the foot of the fountain is Rey. She’s more beautiful than the last time he saw her, all cheeks and legs and gently sun-kissed skin. She’s propped back with her arms stretched out behind her and her neck bent so that she might douse herself in the abnormally languid day. 

_ I’ll draw her someday _ , Ben promises himself. 

> _ It was you. At the fountain that day—the park—you died in my arms.  _
> 
> _ Please, don’t go. Don’t look for me, don’t try to find me.  _

He takes a step closer. The very thought that she is so close he could touch her acts like a magnet pulling him in. 

_ On the roof of the lake house with the sunrise painting her skin—her eyes closed, neck bent just as it is.  _

_ The quintessence of life.  _

He takes another step, and as he does, Rey’s neck comes up. She sits from where she’s been reclined and adjusts herself, focusing on something in the distance. Him. 

> _ I love you.  _
> 
> _ It’s taken me this long to say it, but I do. I love you. And if you care for me, wait for me. Wait with me.  _
> 
> _ Please.  _

Ben is half a second away from taking another step, eyes locked on hers in a battle of wills or love or a force greater than they can imagine.

Just before he does, another bout of wind sweeps past him and her, billowing her hair around her head and flickering the letter between his hands. 

> _ Wait until time catches up and we can be together. Just two more years.  _

There is a break in the traffic. He can see her so clearly—he could go to her now and they could meet. They could have the next two years  _ together _ . It would be so easy, so simple. 

> _ Come to the lake house.  _
> 
> _ Ben, I’m here.  _

At the very last second, Ben takes a step back. A bus comes barreling down the street so close to the curb that his hair blows into his eyes. It knocks the wind out of him and he claps a hand to his chest involuntarily. 

He makes her out through pockets in the windows. She passes in a haze of blue and black. When the bus has passed her eyes are locked on her wrist. She reaches out and strikes the knee of the woman beside her, bringing them both out of their sun-induced coma. 

As he watches her stand and collect her bag, he holds the letter a little tighter. 

They take a moment, reveling in the abnormally beautiful day—one that, against all odds, should not have played out as it has.

He stays until she’s gone. When it’s just him and the other pedestrians and the fountain across the street, Ben forces himself to walk away. 

* * *

Rey stares into the empty mailbox, mourning what she’d lost so long ago, unbelieving that she hadn’t known the full extent of it until now. Her body is wracked with a grief she isn’t sure how to process. In defeat, she lets her body sink away. A clap of thunder rolls through the clouds overhead, an appropriate reaction to the storm in the empty cavity of her chest. 

How do you mourn someone you were never given the chance to meet? 

How do you talk to someone for years, share a more intimate piece of your heart and soul with them than you’ve ever shared with anyone in your entire life, and still never fully know them? 

How do you rip your heart out and give it to someone then watch them die in your arms?

What kind of a world lets that happen? 

Her face is stained in tears and rain. The knees of her jeans are soaked through, wet from sitting in the quickly-pooling ground beneath her. Her head bowed, arms fledged out across the ground. She’s sobbing so hard it racks her body, makes her teeth numb. It comes in deep, guttural pulls, watery breaths in and a flood coming out. 

She doesn’t want to face the truth, but there’s the slimmest of chances things will go  _ right _ , just this one time. So she raises her eyes and sets them on the mailbox. The little red flag. 

It happens so quickly she almost misses it. The way the flag falls, it could easily be the wind or a trick of her mind—wishful thinking brought forth into reality, made whole by the magic of the lake house, whatever that may be. A force, somehow connecting her will and it. 

Despite it all, her heart skips. 

With trembling hands, Rey opens the mailbox, and when she finally gathers the courage, the wherewithal to look inside, it is empty. 

She brings a hand up to cover her mouth and a new wave of tears rush out of her. 

Between pulls of air and shaky, uneven breaths, gravel moves and it stills her heart.

Rey’s vision blurs and her ears feel like they are plugged with cotton. 

She hardly recognizes him when he gets out of the car. His hair is much longer than she’d managed to see in any picture, greying at the temple, and it dawns on her that this Ben, this version of him,  _ her _ version—he is a gift, nonexistent to her until now. He is healthy—but more, he is alive. She nearly stumbles with the need to stand, all the blood which had been driven from her legs rushing back. 

They’re both staring at each other in the pouring rain, soaked to the point of exhaustion, but neither seems to be able to bring themselves to move. 

“Have we waited long enough?” he says finally, coming closer. 

His voice sends a chill down her spine. There’s a depth to it, a rich tenderness she never would have been able to dream up, not in a million years. It does things to her, makes her spine thrum and her fingertips itch to touch him. 

She just stares at him for a minute then lets out a choked noise and finds her bearings. 

“Yes,” she says quickly. She pulls herself forward and lets her body fall into his. He’s soft beneath her, a solid human thing, but so soft to the touch. A breathy laugh escapes her. 

Ben cups his hands around her face and pushes the hair back from her eyes.

“God,” he breathes. He pushes the pads of his thumbs over her brows and then one down the bridge of her nose—across her lips. “You’re even more beautiful than I remember.” 

When her tears turn to laughter, he pulls her in for a kiss that might as well last hours. Her lips are swollen by the time he pulls away and starts to pepper her cheeks, her nose, her forehead with delicate placements of his lips, small kisses used to prove she is there. 

Rey traces the curvature of his face, dives both her hands into his hair and runs over the outline of his ears. His shoulders are like boulders beneath her hands, his biceps strong enough to support her. She tries to convince herself he’s real. 

Eventually a chill runs through them both and they cling to each other a little tighter, neither of them willing to be the one that breaks the spell that has brought them together by letting go. They make their way down the jetty, past the paw prints, and into the lake house. 

“Eight will be happy to see you,” Rey says as they pass through the front door. 

“I’ve missed her,” he notes. “But I’ve missed you more.”

Rey turns and captures him in another kiss, this one quick and chaste, stolen. 

“I can’t believe—”

“You waited,” she says quietly.

“Of course I waited.” Ben tucks a strand of wet hair behind her ear. “I’ll always wait for you.”

She leans into him and he holds her in a way that promises he’s never letting go. The house is empty, the tree standing guard over its secrets a barren thing, but there are buds on its branches, a promise of life to come. Behind them, through the open window, the sun is peeking through the clouds, warding off the rain for another day. 

“I have something for you,” Ben says after a moment. 

Rey pulls herself away—a feat she almost can’t bear—and looks him in the eye, quizzical. 

Ben reaches into the pocket of his coat and pulls out a small, rectangular package in brown butcher’s paper. 

“What is it?”

“Open it,” he says softly. “I’ve been waiting four years for his moment. 

Her fingers are nimble as they make their way over the creases and beneath the folds until the packaging falls away into his waiting hands. Beneath the wrapping is a book Rey hasn’t seen in a lifetime. It catches her breath, stops her heart. A new wave of emotions fills her to the point of bursting. 

“There could have been no two hearts so open, no tastes so similar, no feelings so in unison,” he says as she runs her hands over the face of the book. “You were right,” he adds. “It was worth the wait.”


End file.
